Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: DMEA132-001

Description

To address the DMEA?s need for miniature radiofrequency (RF)-over-fiber technology to simultaneously distribute power and provide full duplex RF interface over fiber optic cable between distributed RF nodes, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a novel, Highly Adaptive, Plug-and-Play, Fiber Optic Communication system (HAVOC) based on an innovative system-in-package (SiP) optical transceiver design. Integrated on a single ceramic powder-filled, woven, microfiberglass-reinforced PTFE composite (CLTE) microwave substrate with athermal packaging design, HAVOC yields a wide operating temperature range (-50?120 deg C), considerable vibration and shock sustainability, high-frequency (in excess of 3 GHz) fiber optic transceiver. The built-in intelligent adaptive analog equalizer that recovers attenuated RF antenna signal and simultaneously compensates for mode dispersion and mode coupling issues, ensures high dynamic range RF (up to 3 GHz) operation of HAVOC. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate HAVOC?s feasibility by designing and developing a full duplex RF interface between at least two RF nodes over a single strand multimode fiber while efficiently supplying DC power over the same fiber core. We expect that at the end of Phase II, the HAVOC prototype will reach TRL 5 and will be demonstrated in an environment with realistic test conditions.