Abstract
An opto-electronic oscillator is a microwave oscillator in which the
resonator is replaced with an optical fiber delay-line carrying an
intensity-modulated laser beam. We consider the frequency and power
fluctuations of a standard DFB telecom laser, and we investigate their
effect on the phase noise of microwaves generated with opto-electronic
oscillators. We propose a theoretical study showing how these two laser
fluctuations are converted into phase noise in the output microwave. This
theory predicts that the power noise should have a minor contribution to
microwave phase noise, while the wavelength fluctuations should strongly
contribute to phase noise via the chromatic dispersion of the
few kilometers long optical fiber delay line. We have experimentally
confirmed the validity of this theory by measuring the relative intensity
noise and the optical frequency noise of a semiconductor laser, which has
later been used for microwave generation. We show that the use of a
zero-dispersion fiber delay-line can lead to a 10 dB improvement of the
phase noise performance, relatively to the case were a standard single mode
fiber is used.
© 2010 IEEE
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