Nonlinear-DSP-Enabled RF-Photonic Link

Digital equalizers have been the major enablers in RF communications in terms of managing component imperfections and channel impairments. Specifically, the ever increasing processing power of the dedicating computing processors has availed a steady increase in the ability of complex communication systems to deal with impairments as well as allowing higher capacities in the information transfer. On the other hand, RF photonic links, characterized by low loss and immunity to electro-magnetic-interference, have assumed a significant interest as an efficient vehicle of transporting the RF signals to and from remote antenna sites. While digital equalizers are a mainstay of RF communications, their utilization in RF photonic links has been scarce, simplistic, and largely reduced to only elementary implementation. Leveraging our expertise in both equalization and RF photonics, we propose to develop and implement a novel class of nonlinear equalizers, particularly suited to RF photonic links, providing the much needed extended dynamic range and linearity to these links. Successful completion of this program will enable unprecedented higher operational speeds and elevated capacities of the information transfer, thus finally availing performance close to their theoretically feasible bounds.