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.