A Practicable Optoelectronic Oscillator with Ultra-Low Phase Noise

Abstract

In this paper, an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with ultra-low phase noise and high stability based on the injection-locked and phase-locked loop is proposed. In theory, the injection-locked frequency range of the injection signal is studied based on the phase dynamics equation, and the phase noise performance of the injection-locked OEO is analyzed. The role of the phase-locked loop on the frequency stability of the OEO is analyzed based on the phase-locked loop transfer function. In addition, this paper builds an injection-locked OEO based on a phase-locked loop. The injection-locked signal is the high-frequency output of the multiplication crystal oscillator (MCO). At the same time, this MCO synchronously outputs a low-frequency signal, which is used as the reference signal of the phase-locked loop. The experimental results show that the proposed OEO output frequency is 10 GHz, and the phase noise is −89.25 dBc/Hz@100 Hz, −121.71 dBc/Hz@1 kHz, and −145.39 dBc/Hz@10 kHz; the side-mode suppression ratio is 80 dB; the frequency stability is 2.06 × 10−11@1 s, 9.03 × 10−11@10 s, 1.03 × 10−10@100 s, and 3.03 × 10−10@1000 s. Consistent with the theoretical analysis results, the solution takes into account the frequency stability, side-mode suppression ratio, and phase noise performance. The simple structure is more advantageous in practical applications.

Keywords

• optoelectronic oscillator (OEO)
• injection locking (IL)
• phase-locked loop (PLL)
• ultra-low phase noise