Spurious mode reduction in dual injection-locked optoelectronic oscillators

Optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) are promising sources of low phase noise radio frequency (RF) signals. However, at X-band frequencies, the long optical fiber delay line required for a high oscillator Q also leads to spurious modes (spurs) spaced too narrowly to be filtered by RF filters. The dual injection-locked OEO (DIL-OEO) has been proposed as a solution to this problem. In this work, we describe in detail the construction of a DIL-OEO. We also present experimental data from our systematic study of injection-locking in DIL-OEOs. With this data, we optimize the DIL-OEO, achieving both low phase noise and low spurs. Finally, we present data demonstrating a 60 dB suppression of the nearest-neighbor spur without increasing the phase noise within 1 kHz of the 10 GHz central oscillating mode. c 2011 Optical Society of America