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Fibers vs.

Coax for RF Delay line Applications


Er'el Granot(1,2), Raviv Weber(1), Shai Tzadok(1) , Guy Gertel(1) and Niv Narkiss(1)
(1)

(2)

Finisar-Israel, 3 Golda Meir St. Nez-Ziona, 74140, Israel

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Ariel, Israel

Abstract A comparison between the RF-over-fiber and the


RF-over-coax technologies is presented. It is shown that while in
relatively short delay lines the coax technology will do, for delay
lines longer than a certain distance the fiber technology has a
clear advantages: Beyond several microseconds it is better in
terms of volume, Noise Figure and cost.
Index Terms RF over fiber, Optical fibers, Radio over fibers,
delay lines.

that it took the industry few decades (from the invention of


optical fibers) to adopt the RF over fiber technology.
During the last decade several parameters have changed. On
the one hand, the optical communication technology improved
considerably (in terms of performances and low cost) and on
the one hand the RF applications demands increased (in terms
of spectral bandwidth, distances and number of elements).
Optical fiber

I. INTRODUCTION

II. RF OVER FIBER AND COAXIAL CABLES


In photonics microwave links the data is transmitted via
optical carriers, which are modulated by the RF signal. At the
transmitter side the RF signal is transcribed over the optical
carrier, and therefore can be transmitted over long distances
via optical fibers. At the detection end the optical data is reconverted to RF signal by optical detectors (see Fig.1).
Clearly, the conversion from RF signal to optical one and
eventually back to RF signal cost a considerable loss of
power. Even in a back-to-back configuration, such a setup has
a Noise Figure (NF) of ~30dB. It is therefore not a surprise

RF modulator

Laser

Detector
RF out

RF in

Fig. 1. Basic components of a fiber optic link: modulation device,


optical fiber and photodetection device
10

10

Volume (cm )

Recently there has been a growing development of analog


communication systems in the RF domain[1-3]. As the
channel capacity and bit-rate increase the complexity and cost
of the transfer line increase as well. Not only that these
devices become extremely expensive and cumbersome, but for
certain applications even simple parameters such as weight
and volume become crucial factors, which may hinder any
project feasibility.
An example of great importance is Analog RF Radar, which
consists up-to several hundreds of RF antennas in array. To
transmit its data via coaxial cable would result in extremely
heavy cables (80-600kg per km) and high attenuation (at least
450dB/km @10GHz)[2-3].
These two main deficiencies (weight and loss) can be
overcome by replacing the electrical cable with optical ones.
Optical fibers have extremely high transparency and the losses
(~0.2dB/km) are negligible with comparison to coaxial cables,
and obviously are extremely lighter (only 1.7kg/km)[2,3].
Therefore, usage of optical fibers instead of electrical ones
allows transmitting the data to longer distances, and to
integrate the devices in smaller and lighter packages.

10

10

10

10

smf28 fiber
RG174
RG142
RG214

-2

10

-2

10

-1

10

10

delay time (sec)

10

10

Fig. 2. A comparison between the volume of different coax cables


and smf28 (fiber) for the same delay lines.

The low absorption of optical fibers makes them


advantageous solutions to many long distance data transport
applications.
One of the RF applications is a delay line. Such an element
is required in many Antenna, Radar and RF systems. While it
is indeed impractical of using fibers for a delay line of several

Cost ($)

10

10

Fiber
Coax+30dB amplifiers
Coax+10dB amplifiers

1-3GHz line, the schematic shown in Fig.1 can be simplified


considerably since the laser can be modulated directly, i.e.,
there is no need for an external modulator. As a consequence,
the overall cost can be reduced below 1k$, which makes the
fiber solution advantageous even for delay lines as short
as 0.2 sec .

10

NF(dB)

meters, even for a hundred meters the fiber advantage is


evidently seen.
It should be stressed that high attenuation in coax cables is
not a matter only of power consumption, but more important,
to compensate for the power loss amplifiers must be
introduced every certain distance. These amplifiers add noise
and increase the NF of the channel. In optical fibers these
amplifiers are not required and therefore there is almost no
increase in NF as a function of distance. Clearly, the same
reasoning goes for the line cost: in the coax system the cost
increases with distance substantially, while the cost of the
fiber line is almost independent of distance.

10

10

Fiber
Coax+30dB amplifiers
Coax+10dB amplifiers

10

10

10

10

delay time (sec)

10

Fig. 4. NF comparison for a 10-20GHz RF line: The fiber solution


NF is almost independent of the delay time (solid line) while the coax
solutions increase linearly with the distance.
2

10
-2
10

10

-1

10

delay time (sec)

10

Fig. 3. Cost comparison for a 10-20GHz spectral bandwidth RF


line. While the fibers solution cost is independent of the delay time,
the coax solution cost is linear with the distance (the dashed line
corresponds to a line with 30dB amplifiers and the dotted line to a
delay line with 10dB ones).

In Fig.2 we demonstrate the volume difference between


fibers and coax solutions for delay line. Clearly, there are at
least two orders of magnitude in favor of fibers. The volume
and weight issues can be reduced even further by adopting the
Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology, which allow
transmitting several wavelengths on the same fiber.
In Fig.3 we compare the difference in cost between the two
solutions. While a fiber solution (for 10-20GHz spectral
bandwidth) costs ~4-5k$ today, it is almost independent of the
delay. Coax solutions, on the other hand do not have a
transition cost (from RF to optics and vice versa) but depends
strongly on the distance since they are extremely more
expensive (cost ~6$/m while fibers cost few cents, i.e., more
than three orders of magnitude!) and require repetitive
amplifications. In Fig.3 we compare the fiber solution to coax
line with multiple 30dB (~1.5k$, and NF~1) and 10dB
(~0.2k$, and NF~5.5) amplifiers. In any case, the fiber
solution is favorable for delay line > 2 sec . Moreover, for a

In Fig. 4 We compare the same scenarios in terms of NF. In


this case the differences are larger, but again we see that
beyond 10 sec the fiber solution is advantageous, i.e.,
suffers from the smallest NF.
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
We have compared the RF-over-fiber solution to the
ordinary RF-over-coax for the time-delay application. The
comparison was done for three parameters: volume, cost and
NF. For delay lines, which exceeds several microseconds we
clearly see a preference of fibers over coaxial cables (and of
course there is always the weight issue, which is usually more
than 300 times larger in coax). We did not discuss here all the
parameters, which should be considered (nonlinearities, phase
noise etc.), however, volume, weight, NF and cost are the
parameters, which are essential for adopting any new
technology.
REFERENCES
[1] W. H. Cantrell, Tuning analysis for the high-Q class-E power
amplifier, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory & Tech., vol. 48, no.
12, pp. 2397-2402, December 2000.
[2] W.S.C. Chang (Ed.), RF Photonic Technology in Optical Fiber
Links. Cambridge University Press (2002)
[3] C.H. Cox III, Analog Optical Links: Theory and Practice, .
Cambridge University Press (2006)

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