For the needs of military and civilian applications such as microwave communications, over-the-horizon radar, and cable television (CATV) systems, a homodyne coherent microwave photonic transmission link technology based on optical phase-locked loop and particle swarm optimization is proposed to realize high dynamic range and long-distance transmission of optical radio frequency (RF) signal. At the front end of the link, the homodyne optical phase-locked loop was used to realize the phase tracking and locking of the local oscillator light to the signal light, which can suppress the laser frequency drift and phase noise and the phase noise deterioration caused by long optical fiber within the lock-in bandwidth. Meanwhile, the balanced detection eliminates relative intensity noise related to direct current (DC) components. In addition, by analyzing the source of nonlinear distortion at the front end of the link, we utilized particle swarm optimization to search for the optimal nonlinear distortion correction coefficients in the digital processing unit at the back end, and performed delay matching, amplitude and phase equalization, and linear phase demodulation for the I/Q digital signals. The high dynamic range and long-distance (≥120 dB·Hz ^2/3 and 100.8 km) transmission of RF signals within 100 MHz frequency band is realized.