RF over Fiber Networks
Optically-switched RF over Fiber - When performance, security, reliability, and availability matter.
Radio Frequency (RF) signals have been distributed over coaxial cables for decades, but for today's mission critical government/military/intelligence operations that can be limiting, expensive, and can pose a security risk. As a compelling alternative, fiber's main advantages for RF signal distribution include extremely low transmission losses, reduced noise and electromagnetic interference that bring improved security, performance, readiness, and resilience.
USE CASE – SATELLITE GROUND STATIONS
With a fiber network and all-optical switching, organizations can now deploy highly secure solutions with capabilities that are not possible with traditional coax-based systems. In a typical satellite ground station deployment (Fig 1) there are significant benefits of an all fiber-based approach that provide organizations with key advantages:
- Control rooms can be safely located further away from antennas
- Provisioning can be done remotely, automatically, and instantly - even from across the world
- Satellite dishes can be shared by different organizations
- Data can be easily rerouted around failures
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Fig 1: Typical optically-switched RF over Fiber architecture for satellite ground stations.