Photonic oscillators for small platforms

Emerging commercial and military platforms have demanding needs for communications systems in support of ever-increasing data rates. This in turn challenges current state of the art oscillators that provide reference signals to carry data and information as modulated sidebands. Since the frequency and spectral purity of the oscillator's output directly determines the system's data capacity, oscillators with reduced noise and increased frequency are in demand. State of the art electronics approaches fall short of meeting this demand, as losses increase with frequency, resulting in increased noise. Attempts to ameliorate the noise in oscillators with frequency in the range of 1 to 100 GHz results in complexity in circuitry, and has had limited success.