Implementation of a Highly-Sensitive and Wide-Range Frequency Measurement Using a Si₃N₄ MDR-Based Optoelectronic Oscillator

• Main Authors: Pengcheng Liu, Pengfei Zheng, Dongdong Lin, Jing Li, Xuemeng Xu, Guohua Hu, Binfeng Yun, Yiping Cui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2019-01-01
• Series: IEEE Photonics Journal
• Subjects: Micro-disk resonator; optoelectronic oscillator; frequency measurement.
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8913578/
• ISSN: 1943-0655

Microwave photonic technologies have been introduced for achieving broadband radio-frequency signal measurement. However, few of the proposed schemes mention the low-power radio-frequency signal detection, which stringently limits their practical applications in certain areas. In this paper, we designed and demonstrated a wideband low-power radio-frequency signal measurement system with optoelectronic oscillator. Here, the unknown radio-frequency signal matched the potential oscillation mode is allowable to be detected, amplified and estimated. The key component in the tunable optoelectronic oscillator is a silicon nitride micro-disk resonator with a very high Q-factor, which is utilized to achieve frequency selection as a microwave filter. A frequency measurement system range from 1 ~ 20 GHz with radio frequency power as low as -105 dBm, measurement errors of ±375 MHz and the maximum gain of 61.7 dB were realized experimentally.