Opto-electronic oscillator

An opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) is an optoelectronic circuit that produces repetitive electronic sine wave and/or modulated optical continuous wave signals. An opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) is an optoelectronic circuit that produces repetitive electronic sine wave and/or modulated optical continuous wave signals. An opto-electronic oscillator is based on converting the continuous light energy from a pump laser to radio frequency (RF), microwave or mm-wave signals. The OEO is characterized by having very high quality factor (Q) and stability, as well as other functional characteristics that are not readily achieved with electronic oscillators. Its unique behavior results from the use of electro-optical (E/O) and photonic components, which are generally characterized with high efficiency, high speed, and low dispersion in the microwave frequency regime. In an OEO, the phase noise of the oscillator does not increase with the frequency that is subject to other implementations by electronic oscillators such as quartz crystal oscillators, dielectric resonators, sapphire resonators or air-dielectric resonators. OEO was introduced in the early 1990s.