Injection Locking of Optoelectronic Oscillators With Large Delay

• Published in: Journal of lightwave technology Vol. 40; no. 9; pp. 2754 - 2762
• Main Authors: Hasan, Mehedi, Banerjee, Abhijit, Hall, Trevor James
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.05.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: And phase noise spectrum; Band-pass filters; Delay lines; Delays; Fiber technology; Frequency locking; Group delay; injection locking; lock-in range; Noise; Optical fiber amplifiers; Optical fibers; Optical resonators; Optoelectronics; Oscillators; Phase noise; Radio frequency; time delay oscillator; Time lag
• ISSN: 0733-8724; 1558-2213
• DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2022.3148480

The optoelectronic oscillator is a delay line oscillator that leverages optical fibre technology to realize the large delay required for low phase noise systems. Spurious sidemodes are an artefact of the delay line oscillator, yet treatments of injection locking of optoelectronic oscillators have relied on the application of classical injection locking theory valid only for single mode oscillators. The large delay contributed by the optical fibre delay line is accounted for by the classical theory only in part through the quality factor Q that captures the round-trip group delay in a neighborhood of the oscillation frequency. This paper presents a new formulation of time delay oscillators subject to injection that describes all the essential features of their dynamics and phase noise. The common assumptions of a single mode oscillator and weak injection are removed. This is important to correctly predict the lock-in range, the suppression of sidemodes and the phase noise spectrum. The findings of the analysis are validated by experimental measurements provided by an optoelectronic oscillator under injection by an external source.