Stable microwave generation based on a brillouin fiber laser with saturable absorber

Abstract

A simple approach to generate stable microwave signals by heterodyning pump light and Stokes lasing light from a dual‐wavelength Brillouin fiber laser is proposed and demonstrated. A 10‐km‐long single mode fiber is used as the Brillouin gain medium, and an ultranarrow linewidth distributed feedback laser is used as Brillouin pump, while a 4‐m‐long unpumped polarization maintaining erbium‐doped fiber and subring cavity suppress unwanted side modes. A 10.7 GHz microwave signal is detected by photodetector and the signal linewidth is about 300 kHz. Signal to noise ratio of the microwave signal is about 50 dB. The power and frequency of microwave signal is highly stable, with almost no fluctuations over the test period. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1513–1516, 2014

An L-band multi-wavelength Brillouin–erbium fiber laser with switchable frequency spacing

“…However, the limitations of narrow channel spacing, typically 10 GHz in silica fiber, that are inherent to MWBEFLs, complicate the de-multiplexing process and filtering. Many efforts have been made to increase the frequency spacing or to realize switchable spacing in order to facilitate a demultiplexing process [10][11][12][13]. By utilizing a tunable bandpass filter and a pre-amplified BP technique, Almusafer et al designed an MWBEFL to achieve an average of six Stokes signals with 0.174 nm frequency spacing in C + L bands [10].…”

“…By utilizing a tunable bandpass filter and a pre-amplified BP technique, Almusafer et al designed an MWBEFL to achieve an average of six Stokes signals with 0.174 nm frequency spacing in C + L bands [10]. A five-channel L-band MWBEFL with double Brillouin frequency shifts was reported [11]. An L-band Brillouin Raman fiber laser with 20 GHz frequency spacing that used gain fiber based on double-clad fibres, achieving 102 Stokes was successfully demonstrated [12].…”