Tunable Optoelectronic Oscillator Using FWM Dynamics of an Optical-Injected DFB Laser

Abstract

A wideband frequency-tunable optoelectronic oscillator using four-wave mixing nonlinear dynamics of an optical-injected distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor laser is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Utilizing the wavelength-selective optical gain of the DFB laser under optical injection, a frequency-tunable microwave photonic filter is realized, which is used as the desired oscillation frequency selector. Therefore, the electrical bandpass filter is not required in the proposed scheme. An optoelectronic oscillating signal with a frequency tuned from 9.63 to 19.11 GHz is obtained by changing the injection parameters. The single sideband phase noise of the generated 13.74-GHz microwave signal is measured to be -103.19 dBc/Hz at 10-kHz offset.