RF-over-Fiber: Combining Low-Loss Transportation and Photonic Processing

This talk explores RF-over-fiber (RFoF) technology as a transportation protocol for modern radio and sensing systems. It compares its bandwidth efficiency and power advantages with conventional digital signal transport. We detail the factors to shape the RFoF link budgets, including optical losses, noise contributions, and optical component limitations. Special attention is given to the non-linear behavior of optical modulators and their compensation, to improve SFDR. Beyond transport, we highlight how photonic processing — enabled when RF signals are modulated onto a light carrier — can add additional functionality such as filtering, mixing and true time delay beamforming. This supports applications in lightweight antenna remote, for example in SATCOM systems, distributed MIMO radar systems and wideband tunable microwave photonic filtering.