Comparison of forward- and backward-propagating optical-fiber-induced noise for application to optical fiber frequency transfer

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Comparison_of_forward_and_backwardpropagating_opticalfiberinduced_noise.pdf (1.1 MB)

Links to Files

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7138954/

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/FCS.2015.7138954
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/38838

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UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department
UMBC Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0269-8433

Date

2015-04

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Cahill, James P., Olukayode Okusaga, Weimin Zhou, Curtis R. Menyuk, and Gary M. Carter. “Comparison of Forward- and Backward-Propagating Optical-Fiber-Induced Noise for Application to Optical Fiber Frequency Transfer.” In 2015 Joint Conference of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium & the European Frequency and Time Forum, 765–68, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/FCS.2015.7138954.

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain

Subjects

Optical noise
Rayleigh scattering
UMBC Computational Photonics Laboratory
Optical interferometry
UMBC Optical Fiber Communications Laboratory
UMBC High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF)
Optical scattering
UMBC High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF)
Optical attenuators
Optical fibers
Radio frequency (RF) transfer
Noise
UMBC Optical Fiber Communications Laboratory
RF-photonics

Abstract

Current schemes for the photonic transfer of radio frequencies rely on bidirectional active feedback in which the optical signal must propagate in both directions through a single optical fiber. This requirement is not readily compatible with existing optical fiber networks; hence, it is important to develop alternate means of suppressing optical-fiber-induced noise. Previously, we experimentally characterized an optical-fiber-length-dependent noise source that contributes to the phase noise of the radio frequency signal, and we demonstrated that it can be mitigated by frequency dithering the laser. However, we have not developed an adequate model to describe the noise source. In this work, we compared the experimentally-measured forward- and backward-propagating optical-intensity noise spectra. We found that the power of the backward-propagating noise is over 40 dB higher than the power of the forward-propagating noise. We also found that the forward-propagating noise scales faster with respect to optical-fiber length than does the backward-propagating noise. These results will aid the development of a complete theory to describe the optical-fiber-length-dependent noise source.