Single-Loop Opto-electronic Oscillator at 10.4 GHz with a cascaded Microstrip Bandpass Filter Configuration

Abstract

The opto-electronic oscillator is a well-known microwave photonic device that produces high-frequency signals in the microwave range. One of the main advantages of the opto-electronic oscillator is that it produces high-frequency signals with low phase noise thanks to the resonator's properties. In most cases the opto-electronic oscillator faces the problem of generating side modes besides the oscillation signal due to non-ideal filtering. In this paper we propose a solution for the additional suppression of these undesired harmonics using a combination of two slightly detuned bandpass microstrip filters. We report an improvement for the side-mode suppression ratio about 8.3 dB with a single-loop 90-m-long opto-electronic oscillator at 10.4 GHz.