Tunable, ultra-low phase noise YIG based opto-electronic oscillator

Abstract

We describe a YIG tuned opto-electronic oscillator with extremely low phase noise. The oscillator can be tuned from 6 to 12 GHz in steps of 3 MHz, and exhibits a phase noise of -128 dBc/Hz at 10 KHz away from the carrier. This is nearly a 30 dB improvement over conventional YIG oscillators, and is derived from the novel approach of the opto-electronic oscillator. To our knowledge, this is the lowest noise performance of any YIG tuned oscillator previously reported.