Edward Ackerman

Edward Ackerman received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Lafayette College in 1987 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Drexel University. Before 1994 he was employed as a microwave photonics engineer at Martin Marietta’s Electronics Laboratory in Syracuse, New York, where he used low-loss narrowband impedance matching techniques to demonstrate the first amplifierless direct modulation analog optical link with RF gain (+3.7 dB at 900 MHz). From 1995 to 1999 he was a member of the Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he developed high-performance analog photonic links for microwave communications and antenna remoting applications. While at Lincoln Laboratory, he achieved the lowest noise figure ever demonstrated for an amplifierless analog optical link (2.5 dB at 130 MHz), and developed a novel linearization technique that uses a standard lithium niobate modulator with only one electrode to enable improved analog optical link dynamic range 125 dBHz4/5) across a broader operational bandwidth (2 – 18 GHz) than other linearization techniques currently allow. Currently he is Vice President of Research and Development for Photonic Systems, Inc. of Billerica, Massachusetts. He has authored or co-authored dozens of technical papers and eight book chapters on the subject of analog photonic subsystem performance modeling and optimization. He has given 28 invited presentations and holds 22 US patents in this field. For his contributions to the optimization of analog optical links, IEEE’s Microwave Theory & Technology Society elected Dr. Ackerman a Fellow in 2007 and a Distinguished Microwave Lecturer from 2019 – 2021.

For JLT, he is handling submissions on the following topics:

• Microwave photonics systems
• Radio-over-fiber technologies
• High-speed analog optical systems