Eval of Commercially Available High Efficiency Photomixer Abstract
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ALMA Memo # 516
Evaluation of a Commercially Available High Efficiency Photomixer
A. Ueda, Y. Sekimoto, M. Ishiguro, S.
Asayama, M. Yamada, T. Noguchi
2005-02-18
Abstract: Application of photomixer technologies to radio astronomy has been developed under the collaboration between NAOJ and NTT Laboratories1-7. We have evaluated high efficiency photomixers for W-band (75 - 110 GHz) and D-band (110-170GHz) using UTC-PD8 photodiodes developed by NTT Photonics Laboratories and fabricated by NTT Electronics Co. (NEL)9-10. Responsivity of the photodiode is approximately 0.4 A/W. The photomixer output power is measured for photocurrents ranging from 1mA to 10mA. The output power with an optical input power of 0.7mW (0.28mA photocurrent) is estimated to be 1 W. This result indicates that the photomixers meet the requirement for the ALMA photonic reference system without using the optical amplifier at each antenna. We also measured output powers for 75GHz - 350GHz and noise performances for 130GHz - 165GHz.
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