Photonic multi-frequency down conversion in hybrid microwave-photonic SATCOM payload

Photonics, which is widely used for terrestrial telecommunication applications, represents a disruptive technology for the future Satellite Communication (SATCOM) scenarios, allowing to reduce the payload system complexity. Several payload subsystems can be implemented in the optical domain instead of in the electrical one. Among them, this paper investigates the microwave-photonic Radio Frequency (RF) signal mixing for frequency conversion. A configuration scheme of a photonic RF mixer based on a dual port Mach-Zehnder Modulator (MZM) and two photonic local oscillators, used as RF down-converter, is presented and its performance is evaluated in the specific case of a binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) signal down conversion.