Experimental demonstration of 1.3 μm VCSEL‐based optoelectronic oscillator at 12 GHz using optical injection‐locking technique

Abstract

Abstract The experimental validation is presented of an optical injection‐locked (OIL) vertical‐cavity surface‐emitting laser (VCSEL)‐based optoelectronic oscillator (VBO) to overcome the direct‐modulation bandwidth limitations of packaged VCSELs. A 1.3 μm VCSEL under OIL is directly modulated at 12 GHz. The carrier phase noise value is −97.7 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset. A time domain characterisation of the oscillator based on Allan variance is proposed. The performed measurements showed that the OIL technique allows an increase in the optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) carrier frequency in comparison with free‐running VBOs while maintaining high spectral purity. The results for a 12 GHz delay‐line OEO with amplitude modulation are also compared with the proposed approach.

Keywords

• amplitude modulation
• laser noise
• optical delay lines
• optical modulation
• optoelectronic devices
• phase noise