Shifted dispersion‐induced RF‐fading based continuously tunable optoelectronic oscillator.

A new continuously tunable optoelectronic oscillator based on shifted dispersion‐induced RF‐fading is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The design provides wideband continuously all‐optical tunability by incorporating the shifted RF‐fading based on a Mach‐Zehnder structure in an optoelectronic feedback loop. By simply varying the path difference between the two arms of the Mach‐Zehnder configuration via an adjustable variable delay line, the fundamental frequency of the oscillator can achieve extremely high and continuous tuning with a frequency upper bound dependent on the delay properties of the variable optical delay line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]