Frequency crosstalk on fiber-optic radio frequency transfer under fiber temperature variation

Abstract

In fiber-optic radio frequency (RF) transfer systems, frequency crosstalk, which contains fiber-induced phase fluctuations under temperature variation, may arise in measurement and the compensation process and degrade the stability of the transferred RF signal. The impact of frequency crosstalk on RF transfer performance is researched under fiber temperature variation. The stability degradation caused by frequency crosstalk is quantitatively analyzed by simulation. The results indicate that the degradation peak is linearly dependent on the crosstalk factor, and the peak position scales with the inverse of RF frequency on the timeline. An experiment is performed based on an RF transfer system with different crosstalk factors, and the measured results agree well with the simulation. For the specified parameters, we provide quantitative guidance on crosstalk isolation requirement for lossless RF transfer, which has great practical significance in predicting and optimizing the performance of a fiber-optic RF transfer system.