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IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee MTT-3 (Microwave photonics) is sponsoring a "High power optical to microwave converter" Student Competition.

This contest is open to all IEEE MTT-S members who are enrolled as students at a university. The objective of the contest is to demonstrate new and effective photodiode power combining and power extraction techniques for stringent microwave photonics applications. Following submission of a proposal describing the potential solution, up to five contestants will be selected and provided six pre-defined photodiodes that are provided by LinearPhotonics. Teams of up to four (4) student members are allowed, provided each team member has a direct contribution to the solution. Contestants are required to demonstrate their design and the optical-to-microwave converter at the IMS2011. The designs will be judged by members of MTT-3 using pre-defined criteria that include converter efficiency, maximum power output, and linearity.

Two winners (or teams) will be selected with a first prize of US $700 and a second prize of US $300. The prizes shall be equally divided between all members of a winning team. In addition, the winners are required to submit an article to the IEEE Microwave magazine.

Specifications and Requirements:

Center frequency	2 to 6 GHz (select one)
Relative bandwidth	>10% of center frequency
Peak RF power output	>23 dBm
Output IP3	>38 dBm
Power efficiency	>5%

The converter must be securely mounted in a customer designed package. It should have an optical FC/APC connector for optical input, an SMA connector for RF output, and up to three banana plugs for DC power supply voltage input. The contestants should choose the most suitable DC power supply voltages. But the maximum/minimum DC voltage is limited to +/- 10 volts. The converter will be evaluated based on the performance between the optical FC/APC connector input and the SMA RF connector output. The MTT-3 committee will use an optical source with a modulation index up to 100% and an optical power up to 100mW for evaluating the design. Datasheets of the package will be provided upon an email to yli2@umassd.edu.

Additional requirements are listed on the main Student Design Competition page.