Analysis and experimental demonstration of underwater frequency transfer with diode green laser

Abstract

We demonstrated an underwater frequency transfer technique with a green diode laser. The characteristic of the timing fluctuation and instability for the transfer technique was analyzed and simulated. With this technique, we had transferred a highly stable 100-MHz frequency signal over an underwater link with distances of 3 m, 6 m, and 9 m for 5000 s, respectively. The experimental results involving the underwater transfer of the 100-MHz radio-frequency signal shows that the rms timing fluctuations are 5.9 ps (3-m link), 6.4 ps (6-m link), and 8.4 ps (9-m link). The calculations also show that the relative Allan deviations for the 3-m, 6-m, and 9-m transmission links are 5.6 × 10−13 at 1 s and 5.3 × 10−15 at 1000 s, 5.8 × 10−13 at 1 s and 1.1 × 10−14 at 1000, and 6.8 × 10−13 at 1 s and 1.1 × 10−14 at 1000 s, respectively. The measured instabilities were lower than Rb and Cs atomic clocks, implying that the proposed frequency transfer scheme can potentially be used to transfer the signals of these atomic clocks over underwater links.