Coherent Optical Receiver Engineering (CORE)

The Coherent Optical Receiver Engineering CORE program studied the development of an all optical RF receiver system and produced a prototype receiver. The bench top demonstration unit instantaneously channelizes 100 GHz of RF bandwidth with 1 GHz resolution and simultaneously translates the center frequency of all the channels to a common intermediate frequency band. The CORE channelizer preserves the signals complex spectra and can be produced to a compact package that occupies less than 15 in 3. The coherent optical processor architectures identified in this study could satisfy a wide range of mission requirements and would be of value in a variety of military RF systems. The demonstrated dynamic range of 45 dB into a 1 GHz bandwidth is superior to the performance of existing electronic and acoustooptic approaches to signal channelization. The CORE architectures identified in this report utilize CW injection locking of a mode locked external cavity semiconductor laser to provide the local oscillator source for the heterodyne process.