Generation of Widely Tunable Narrow-Linewidth Photonic Microwave Signals Based on an Optoelectronic Oscillator Using an Optically Injected Semiconductor Laser as the Active Tunable Microwave Photonic Filter

Abstract

In this work, a novel optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) structure is proposed for generating widely tunable photonic microwave. In this structure, an optical injection semiconductor laser (OISL) functions as an active tunable microwave photonic filter (MPF). Through controlling the injection power and frequency detuning, the OISL is driven into period-one dynamics whose oscillation frequency can be widely tuned from 10.43 to 65.82 GHz. As a result, the OISL can be regarded as a widely tunable active MPF. By introducing an optical feedback loop, the filtered bandwidth of the widely tunable active MPF can be further reduced. Taking the OISL under optical feedback as a widely tunable narrow-bandwidth MPF and a seeding laser source to establish an OEO structure, widely tunable narrowlinewidth photonic microwave can be generated. The experimental results demonstrate that widely tunable photonic microwaves ranging from 10.43 to 39.10 GHz with linewidths below 0.1 MHz and phase variances below 10 −2 (rad 2 ) can be achieved.

Microwave Photonic Signal Generation in an Optically Injected Discrete Mode Semiconductor Laser

“…Compared with microwave synthesis using electronics, which has been extensively explored and developed over the past decades, high-frequency microwave photonic (MWP) signal generation in the optical domain is more convenient and cost-effective. Various approaches of MWP signal generation can generally be classified into optical heterodyning [13,14], direct and external modulation [15][16][17], self-pulsating and mode-locking [18,19], optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) [20][21][22][23][24], and laser dynamics of period-one (P1) [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. The optical heterodyne technique can easily achieve terahertz photonic microwaves by beating between two optical beams with certain wavelength spacing, as such the technique has very wide tunability [13].…”

“…On the other hand, MWP signal generation utilizing external modulation can attain very high frequency and low phase noise microwave signals, but there is a drawback resulting from the insertion loss of the modulators [16]. An OEO is another paradigmatic method to obtain narrow-linewidth microwave signals in both the electrical and optical domains by introducing a feedback loop as a high-quality-factor optoelectronic oscillating cavity to a pump laser [20][21][22][23][24]. Consequently, the phase noise of generated microwaves can be comparable with that produced by mode-locked lasers [19], but the frequency tunability is compromised.…”

Nonlinear Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Dot Laser Subject to Double Delayed Feedback: Numerical Analysis

“…In these reported results, one can see that both theoretical model and experimental studies are intensively presented to observe the rich nonlinear behaviors including the periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic phenomena by judiciously adjusting the strengths of external injections and/or optical feedbacks. The achieved dynamical results are widely used to perform the photonic microwave signals [8,9], secure optical communications [10], optical switching [11], radar [12], all-optical AM-to-FM conversion [13], and radio-over-fiber links [14]. Generally, the conventional quantum well laser has a large line width enhancement factor that results in the large chaotic region with the change of external injection or feedback level [15].…”