Feed forward optical frequency/phase demodulator

A demodulation system used in connection with an analog optical link that provides a wide dynamic range and SNR potential for large RF signal bandwidths. An optical carrier signal modulated with an RF signal is applied to an optical splitter in the demodulation system that splits the signal into first and second carrier signals. One of the carrier signals is applied to a coarse demodulator that provides either PM or FM demodulation to generate a demodulated signal representative of the signal that includes the RF signal and the additive inverse of an error signal. The output from the coarse demodulator is inverted, and integrated in the FM case, and then applied to a phase modulator along with the second optical carrier signal from the optical splitter. The phase modulator modulates the optical carrier signal with the additive inverse of the demodulated signal so that the portion of the RF signal occurring in both the optical carrier signal and the demodulated signal are cancelled, and the optical carrier signal is modulated with the error signal. The modulated carrier signal is applied to a fine demodulator that demodulates the signal to generate the error signal. The error signal and the demodulated signal are combined, and what remains is a substantial copy of the RF signal with minimal excess noise and distortion. Unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers and photodetectors can be provided in the coarse demodulator and the fine demodulator to provide the demodulation.