Electro-optic cosite interference mitigation

Abstract

Cosite interference can be roughly defined as the unintentional degradation of receiver functionality as a result of close proximity to a powerful in-band transmission source; for instance receivers located on modern cellular communication towers often suffer as a result of co-site interference introduced through space limitations and overcrowding. The Opto- Cancellation system was designed as a novel approach to mitigate the problem of co-site interference. The system accomplishes interference cancellation through the integration of traditional EO telecommunications devices into an otherwise wholly RF communications system. This paper will discuss the integration of EO components into an RF communications system as well as the non-traditional integration of EO components to perform co-site interference mitigation. To date the system has performed cancellation up to 80 dB reduction of a narrowband signal and 45 dB reduction of a 100 MHz bandwidth signal without affecting the receiver's signal of interest. The system is able to perform extremely wide-band interference cancellation by utilizing the large instantaneous bandwidth inherent in a fast EO modulator, largely addressing the limitations of traditional RF interference cancellation/mitigation techniques such as digital sampling and filtering.