Study on low-phase-noise optoelectronic oscillator and high-sensitivity phase noise measurement system

An analytic model for an injection-locked dual-loop optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is proposed and verified by experiments in this paper. Based on this theoretical model, the effect of injection power on the single-sideband phase noise of the OEO is analyzed, and results suggest that moderate injection is one key factor for a balance between phase noise and spur for OEO. In order to measure superlow phase noise of OEOs, a cross-correlation measurement system based on the fiber delay line is built, in which high linear photodetector and low-phase-noise amplifier are used to improve systematic sensitivity. The cross-correlation measurement system is validated by experiments, and its noise floor for the X band is about -130 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz and -168 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz after a cross correlation of 200 times.