Optical Delay Line Solutions Comparison

Optical Delay Line solutions are used to delay an RF signal by a certain amount of time ranging from nanoseconds to microseconds. The typical use cases are radar calibration and altitude simulation.

Based on customer’s requirements and application we offer two types of delay solutions.

If the customer needs one or couple delays, the most cost effective solution is the RFoF Delay Solution which comprises of one RFoF transceiver and one or more standalone fiber delay spools. We recommend spools with passthrough connectors which allow to easily connect the Transmitter and Receiver RFoF modules to the delay spool without needing a patch cable, thus reducing the optical loss.

However, this cost-effective setup which is best for a lab environment has its limitations. For example, if longer spools and/or higher frequencies are needed, then optical amplification and/or dispersion control should be considered which are not easily implemented in such standalone solutions.

Our chassis based ODL solution is an integrated solution designed for production environment and/or for situation where large delay ranges are required. Thanks to it is progressive variable delay architecture, this ODL can form up to 4,024 delays or more.

The internal optical switches enable the progressive ODL to form variable delays using few delay segments. For example, up to 256 distinct delays can be formed by using only 8 delay segments. This approach saves significant space and cost.

Further, based on the application features such as Automatic Gain Control (AGC), Dispersion Control (DC) can be easily incorporated. Further, the integrated ODL comes with various remote monitoring and control options. For further details see the Optical Delay line section.

Our technical sales team has extensive experience with either solution and will discuss with you to either options to determine which one fits best to your applications and requirements.