Journal
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS
Volume 28, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2021.3129250
Keywords
Optical receivers; Radio frequency; Optical noise; Optical attenuators; Bandwidth; Antennas; Optical sensors; Optical receivers; receiving antennas; noise
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article compares the power efficiency of signal transmission over optical carrier and RF carrier. It reveals that in direct optical detection schemes, the noise equivalent power is significantly higher than that of RF signal detection with an antenna. RF transmission has an advantage over optical transmission when the available bandwidth is limited.
To compare the power efficiency of free-space signal transmission over an optical carrier with that of signal transmission over an RF carrier, we compare the signal to noise ratio and the noise equivalent power of various optical detection schemes with that of simple antenna reception of an RF signal. We point out that for direct optical detection schemes, the noise equivalent power for optical detection is orders of magnitude larger than for RF signal detection with an antenna, with only coherent optical detection requiring similar power levels at the receiver as RF detection with an antenna and mixer, for the same available bandwidth. This is often ignored in articles in which the relative advantages of optical and RF transmission are discussed. Optical transmission mostly has advantages when very high capacity is required and where the available RF bandwidth is small.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available