Optical image reject down converter

An all-optical image reject downconverter for converting a received radio frequency signal into a signal comprised of:

• an optical light source providing optical light;
• said optical light being divided into a first optical light path and a second optical light path;
• a first optical modulator for modulating the optical light in the first path with a local oscillator signal;
• a second optical modulator for converting the optical light in the second optical path into optical sidebands;
• a third optical modulator generating additional sidebands by a received radio frequency signal;
• a tunable narrow bandwidth optical filter which passes only a desired optical sideband signal;
• and
• a coupler for heterodyning the desired optical sideband signal in the second optical path with the optical signal in the first optical path to produce a downconverted signal;
• and
• an optical transmission line for transmitting the downconverted optical signal to remote user electronics.

A method for mapping of received radio frequency signals into arbitrary intermediate frequency range optical signals precluding interference between the received signals comprising:

• step of generating an optical light;
• step of dividing said optical light into a first path and a second path;
• step of transferring the optical light in said first path into an optical sideband by modulating it with a first local oscillator frequency;
• step of converting the light in the second path into predetermined frequency sidebands by modulating it with a second local oscillator frequency;
• step of amplifying and generating additional sidebands in the second path by a predetermined electrical frequency;
• step of passing the amplified optical light in the second light path through a narrow-band tunable optical filter to remove all optical frequencies present except a predetermined optical sideband frequency thereby producing a filtered optical light signal;
• and
• step of heterodyning the filtered optical light signal with the modulated optical signal from the first path to produce a downconverted optical signal usable by an electronic circuit.