Optical Pulse Generation by an Optoelectronic Oscillator With Optically Injected Semiconductor Laser

• Published in: IEEE photonics technology letters Vol. 28; no. 17; pp. 1827 - 1830
• Main Authors: Zhou, Pei, Zhang, Fangzheng, Gao, Bindong, Pan, Shilong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2016; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Clocks; Compressing; Microwave oscillators; microwave photonics; Optical amplifiers; Optical attenuators; Optical fibers; Optical pulses; Optical variables measurement; optoelectronic oscillator (OEO); Optoelectronics; Oscillators; pulses; Semiconductor laser; Semiconductor lasers; Timing jitter; Tuning; optoelectronic oscillator (OEO); pulses; microwave photonics; Semiconductor laser
• ISSN: 1041-1135; 1941-0174
• DOI: 10.1109/LPT.2016.2573289

A frequency tunable short optical pulse generation scheme based on a self-starting optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with an optically injected semiconductor laser is proposed and investigated. The generation of optical pulses with a repetition rate coarsely tuned from 6.5 to 15 GHz are demonstrated. Phase noise of the electrical clock signal from the OEO is below -101 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz within the whole tuning range, which leads to a very small timing jitter of the generated optical pulses. Assisted by optical pulse compression technique in the OEO, the full-width-at half-maximum of the generated optical pulses is narrower than 20 ps.