Phase noise in coherent analog AM-WIRNA optical links

Coherent analog amplitude modulated-wideband rectifier narrowband (AM-WIRNA) systems have been the focus of many recent studies because of their high performance and relative immunity to phase noise compared to angle modulated systems. Despite their natural advantages over angle modulated systems, AM-WIRNA receivers are still vulnerable to phase noise because of distortion of their phase broadened signals in a finite bandwidth system. We present the first numerical analysis of the effects of this distortion on the performance of AM-WIRNA systems. The analysis accurately models the power spectral density of the phase-to-intensity noise with a root-mean-square deviation from the averaged experimental noise spectrum of 1.2 dB and a maximum deviation of 3.8 dB in the modulation range of <2 GHz. The accuracy of the analysis is limited primarily by nonidealities in the AM-WIRNA receiver and the accuracy of the analytical intermediate frequency (IF) filter model. Optimal link designs are presented which minimize the impact of phase-to-distortion noise in AM-WIRNA systems. We present experimental data from AM-WIRNA links which use both external cavity and distributed feedback lasers for the signal and local oscillator sources. The numerical analysis predicts the link signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for different signal laser powers to within 1.4 dB of experiment. We find that systems requiring high SNR such as phased array antennas and AM-CATV are significantly affected by this noise.