A novel detection of radio-frequency signal based on an electro-opto-mechanical converter

•We propose a novel RF detection based on the electro-opto-mechanics. It’s realized by the coherent microwave-optical conversion and optical processing. An EOM converter first coherently converts the RF signals into optical signals.•Then, the converted optical signals are parametric amplified and homodyne detected. It’s demonstrated that the noise figure is significantly suppressed in comparison with a conversional RF superheterodyne receiver.•Additionally, the EOM based RF front end shows more advantages in low-power consumption, miniaturization, and massive on-chip integration, especially in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems.•The proposed RF front end opens prospects for RF sensing with an EOM converter and optical photon detectors. It also provides a promising platform for a microwave photon detector. We study a novel detection of radio frequency signal, which is realized by the coherent microwave-optical conversion and optical processing. An electro-opto-mechanical converter, which enables the bidirectional transduction of the information between microwave and optical domains, is performed to convert the radio frequency signal into optical photons. We demodulate the converted optical signal for the baseband information via homodyne detection. We propose a comprehensive design of radio frequency front end based on the electro-opto-mechanics, and investigate the noise characteristics, which is quantified by the noise figure. The results show that the total noise figure can be significantly suppressed to 3.155 dB. Our scheme can be extended to tunable multichannel multimode radio frequency reception with the latest advances on electro-opto-mechanics. This study opens up prospects for radio frequency sensing with coherent microwave-optical conversion.