Injection-locked optoelectronic oscillator with high side-mode suppression ratio and low phase noise based on frequency-conversion delay matching

Abstract

An injection-locked optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) based on frequency-conversion delay matching is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. There are two branches in the proposed OEO, where one branch is used to maintain the oscillation in the cavity, and the other one based on frequency conversion is used to generate a pure frequency-converted injection signal. Owing to the frequency-conversion-based injection locking effect, the side-mode suppression ratio of the proposed OEO can be greatly improved. In addition, the phase noise deterioration induced by the externally-injected signal can be effectively eliminated when the time delays of the two branches are well matched. In the experiment, a pure single-tone microwave signal at 9.99998 GHz is generated, whose side-mode suppression ratio and phase noise are measured to be 74.4 dB and −130 dBc/Hz@10 kHz, respectively.