Stabilization of oscillator phase using a fiber-optic delay-line

The authors describe an electronic oscillator phase stabilizer based on a fiber-optic delay-line. Excellent agreement between calculated and first experimental results was obtained for this fiber-optic stabilized electronic oscillator (FOSO) at 100 MHz and 7.8 GHz. Expressions are derived for the FOSO phase noise performance and optimum fiber length, based on the noise contributions of the various components. The predicted performance of the FOSO expected with improved system components is also calculated. The FOSO is tunable over an extremely wide frequency range, with phase noise performance rivaling that of good resonant-cavity stabilized oscillators, which are constrained to narrowband operation.<
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