Long-term stability improvement of tunable optoelectronic oscillator using dynamic feedback compensation

We propose and demonstrate a novel method to improve the long-term stability of the wideband tunable optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) where a dynamic compensation scheme is achieved to offset the parameter variation of the fiber. In our method, a 900 MHz calibration signal transmits in the fiber link of the OEO’s feedback loop for establishing a servo system which can extract the time delay of the feedback loop. The time delay varies with the external environment because refractive index and length of the fiber fluctuate with ambient temperature variations. Taking the extracted information as the reference, the wavelength of the tunable laser used in the OEO can be controlled precisely and continually to offset the random delay fluctuation in the fiber. Consequently, the long-term stability of the microwave signal generated by the OEO can be optimized. The experiment results show that Allan deviation achieved in 1000-s averaging time is improved more than two orders of magnitude when the tunable OEO worked at 2.4 GHz.