Laser-based atmospheric radio-frequency transfer with sub-picosecond timing fluctuation using single phase compensator

Abstract

We demonstrate a 100-m long outdoor laser-based atmospheric transfer with sub-picosecond timing fluctuation using a single phase compensator setup. With this frequency transfer scheme, a 1 GHz radio-frequency signal has been transferred over a 100 m atmospheric link. Timing fluctuation and instability were measured to evaluate the quality of the distributed frequency signal. The experimental results show the root-mean-square timing fluctuation of the transferred frequency signal is 441 fs within 5000 s, with a relative fractional frequency instability of 2 × 10−13 @ 1 s and 2 × 10−16 @ 1000 s. The proposed frequency transfer technique with single phase compensator has a potential application that disseminating a commercial Cs clock and H-master signal in free space since the stability of the transmission link is superior to these atomic clocks.