Spectrally Pure RF Photonic Source Based on a Resonant Optical Hyper-Parametric Oscillator

Abstract

We demonstrate a free running 10GHz microresonator-based RF photonic hyper-parametric oscillator characterized with phase noise better than -60dBc/Hz at 10Hz, -90dBc/Hz at 100Hz, and -150dBc/Hz at 10MHz. The device consumes less than 25mW of optical power. A correlation between the frequency of the continuous wave laser pumping the nonlinear resonator and the generated RF frequency is confirmed. The performance of the device is compared with the performance of a standard optical fiber based coupled opto-electronic oscillator of OEwaves.