Stable and Low-Spurs Optoelectronic Oscillators: A Review

Abstract

An optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is an optoelectronic hybrid oscillator which utilizes ultra-low loss fiber as an electro-magnetic energy storage element, overcoming the limits of traditional microwave oscillators in phase noise performance. Due to their ability to generate ultra-low phase noise microwave signal, optoelectronic oscillators have attracted considerable attentions and are becoming one of the most promising and powerful microwave signal sources. In this paper, we briefly introduce the operation principle and discuss current research on frequency stability and spurious suppression of optoelectronic oscillators.

Ultrafast and Wideband Microwave Photonic Frequency-Hopping Systems: A Review

“…Opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) has attracted great interest for decades [35][36][37] to replace the conventional RF signal generator for applications that have precise timing requirement due to the OEO's high stability and low phase noise performance over a wide frequency bandwidth. OEO usually consists of a laser source, an electro-optic modulator, a section of optical fiber, a photodetector, an electrical amplifier, a microwave bandpass filter, and an electrical power coupler, such that the RF signal is repeatedly selected by an electrical bandpass filter and amplified to ensure gain is larger than the loss in the OEO cavity to achieve a high-Q factor.…”

Special Issue “Microwave Photonics 2018”

“…The present Special Issue gathers eight papers reporting state-of-the-art research progress and breakthroughs accomplished by internationally recognized research teams in the field of microwave photonics through the year 2018. The reported research results, distributed in two research papers [11,12] and six review papers [13][14][15][16][17][18], cover several of the specific strategic areas outlined in Section 1.…”

“…Due to their ability to generate ultra-low phase noise signals, optoelectronic oscillators have attracted considerable attention and are becoming one of the most promising microwave signal sources. The last review paper by Liu and co-workers [18] addresses stable and low-spur optoelectronic oscillators and briefly introduces the operation principle and discusses current research on frequency stability and spurious suppression of optoelectronic oscillators.…”

Progress in Optoelectronic Oscillators

“…The long optical fiber in an OEO acts as an efficient energy storage component. The quality factor is given by (Liu et al 2018) and it depends on the OEO oscillation frequency ( ) selected by the band pass filter whose center frequency is and the total loop delay time (τ). The total loop delay time is the sum of the optical delay time ( , which is proportional to the length of the fiber, and the RF delay time , which is mainly due to amplifiers and the cavity (Romisch et al 2000).…”