To develop a generic electro-photonic transceiver platform capable of sampling and synthesizing signals directly in the microwave range up to Ka band (34 ghz)

 

The GSP study "New Microwave Sampling Concepts for TTC architecture" has shown that the electro-photonic sampling technology is capable of sampling signals up to Ka band. Whereas standard sampling technologies are still limited up to 20 ghz. The same electro-photonic technology can be used in the ground stations receivers (using microwave subsampling) or in the transmitter (signal oversampling). The electro-photonic device is associated with high performance ADC , DAC and FPGA and will be integrated in a transmitter and receiver front end. The generic electro-photonic transceiver will allow a complete reconfigurability of the microwave front end depending on the mission. The digital interface will simplify the antenna architecture (by removing all the frequency up and down converters)and it will be directly connected to the back-end digital modem or digital correlator (by mean of 10 gbit/s ethernet interface for example).

 

The tasks of the activity will include:

- Photo-electronic transceiver architecture definition

- Transceiver detailed design

- Transceiver breadboard manufacturing and test