Analysis of the phase noise contributions in optoelectronic oscillator with optical gain

Abstract

Thanks to the development of high power uni-travelling-carrier photodiodes, we studied optoelectronic oscillators architectures with optical gain. We compared the phase noise performances with two different optical amplifiers, based on erbium-doped fiber or semiconductor. Optical intensity noise is the main limitation for the phase noise, both at low and high offset frequencies. With a semiconductor optical amplifier, ultra-low phase noise is reached with equivalent performances from 8 to 15 GHz.