Spurious Tone Reduction and Signal Stabilization of Optoelectronic Oscillators by Low-Frequency RF Signal Modulation

In this study, the oscillation signal stabilization and spurious tone suppression of a directly modulated optoelectronic oscillator (DM-OEO) are simultaneously achieved by modulating a laser with a low-frequency radio frequency (RF) signal. The laser in the DM-OEO is modulated by a rectangular wave with a period inversely proportional to the frequency interval of the spurious tones and a duty cycle of 50%. The optical sidebands of the rectangular wave-modulated laser pulled the optical gain of the spurious tones of the DM-OEO, resulting in a spurious tone suppression and time stabilization in the DM-OEO signal. We achieve a 15 GHz DM-OEO with a 40.14 dB side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) and 2.55 dB improvement in the oscillation power stability compared to that without RF modulation.