An All-Optical Ka-Band Microwave Long-Distance Dissemination System Based on an Optoelectronic Oscillator

We proposed an all-optical Ka-band microwave long-distance dissemination system based on an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). In this system, a single tone with high spectrum purity and low phase noise is excited by an injection-locked OEO, and distributed to the remote site through the fiber loop of the OEO at the same time. The second harmonic of the reference signal modulates the round-tripping optical signal at the local site, which achieves the phase conjugator at the optical domain. At the remote end, the phase-conjugated signal is photomixed with the OEO signal to eliminated the phase offset. The proposed scheme improves the phase noise of the high frequency signal received at the remote site and reduces the photoelectric conversion loss. We demonstrated the transmissions of a 36 GHz frequency-quadrupled RF signal along a 6 km optical fiber loop, and the frequency stability is 1.069 × 10-14/1 s and 3.3 × 10-16/1000 s. The single-sideband (SSB) phase noise of the received signal at the remote site is up to -130 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset frequency.