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External cavity lasers (ECL) based on semiconductor diode gain elements and Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) have been developed for Telecom (OC-48) nd Analog (CATV, QAM) applications. They possess very narrow linewidth (100 kHz) and exceptional wavelength stability.These qualities makes them attractive platform for implementation of heterodyne sources and Optical Phase Locked Loops (OPLL) for Microwave Photonics applications.We discuss two types of such heterodyne sources: heterodyne oscillator based on heterodyning of two ECL, and fixed frequency heterodyne oscillators based on ECL with FBG written in the polarization maintaining fiber.All two types of heterodyne sources were built based on industry standard 14-pin butterfly package. All of them exhibited excellent wavelength stability (less than 1 pm/mA and 1-2 pm/ o C). Fixed frequency sources provided beat oscillation around 40 GHz.We present performance characteristics and measurement data on (linewidth, phase noise, heterodyne mixing, etc.) and discuss the merits of ECL use as heterodyne sources for Microwave Photonics applications.

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