An Integrated Millimeter-Wave Satellite Radiometer Working at Room-Temperature with High Photon Conversion Efficiency Articles uri icon

publication date

  • March 2022

start page

  • 2400

end page

  • 2413

issue

  • 6

volume

  • 22

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1424-3210

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1424-8220

abstract

  • In this work, the design of an integrated 183 GHz radiometer frontend for earth observation
    applications on satellites is presented. By means of the efficient electro-optic modulation of a
    laser pump with the observed millimeter-wave signal followed by the detection of the generated
    optical sideband, a room-temperature low-noise receiver frontend alternative to conventional Low
    Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) or Schottky mixers is proposed. Efficient millimeter-wave to 1550 nm
    upconversion is realized via a nonlinear optical process in a triply resonant high-Q Lithium Niobate
    (LN) Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) resonator. By engineering a micromachined millimeter-wave
    cavity that maximizes the overlap with the optical modes while guaranteeing phase matching, the
    system has a predicted normalized photon-conversion efficiency 10􀀀1 per mW pump power,
    surpassing the state-of-the-art by around three orders of magnitude at millimeter-wave frequencies.
    A piezo-driven millimeter-wave tuning mechanism is designed to compensate for the fabrication and
    assembly tolerances and reduces the complexity of the manufacturing process.

subjects

  • Telecommunications

keywords

  • radiometers; whispering gallery mode (wgm) resonators; room-temperature receivers; optoelectronic upconversion; high photon conversion efficiency; millimeter-wave radiation; satellite; earth observation