Optoelectronic phase locking of microwave signals up to 4 GHz using a laser-diode-based electrooptic harmonic mixer

Abstract
A reflection-mode GaAs electrooptical sampler has been used for constructing a harmonic mixer to optoelectronically phase-lock microwave signals up to 4 GHz in a laser-diode-based system. The conversion loss of the harmonic mixer is 81 dB. The phase noise degradation of the phase-locked 4-GHz signal at 5-kHz offset measured with respect to the 500-MHz synthesizer signal driving the laser diode is 38 dB.