Optically locked low-noise photonic microwave oscillator
Abstract
The next-generation sensing and communication applications rely on high-frequency microwave generation with low-noise. The microwave photonic technology is promising by the practical application is limited by its complex architecture so far. Here, we demonstrate an optically locked low-noise photonic microwave oscillator, so that all the optical components are packaged within a small module of 166 mL, and low noise microwave generation is achieved at 10.4 GHz with single-sideband phase noise of -54 dBc/Hz at 10 Hz, -141 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz, and -162 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset. Above performance arises from a dual-laser self-injection-locking scheme to a single Fabry-Perot cavity with high Q exceeding 10^8, with over 20 dB common-mode noise suppression. The low-noise nature of such reference is coherently transferred to the X-band through a high-performance TFLN electro-optic comb chip, thereby overcoming long-standing barriers in photonic microwave integration to enable truly field-deployable low-noise microwave generation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.09408,
title = {Optically locked low-noise photonic microwave oscillator},
author = {Zexing Zhao and Bin Li and Kunpeng Jia and Chenye Qin and Xiaofan Zhang and Jingru Ji and Hua-Ying Liu and Xiao-Hui Tian and Zhong Yan and Xiaoshun Jiang and Xinlun Cai and Biaobing Jin and Zhenlin Wang and Wei Liang and Shi-ning Zhu and Zhenda Xie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09408},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
19 pages,5 figures