Microwave Photonic Multimode Injection-Locked Frequency Divider With a Wide Operational Range Based on an Optoelectronic Oscillator

We propose and implement a microwave photonic multimode injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) with a wide frequency operational range based on an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). In the OEO, a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) and a photodetector (PD) are employed to construct a frequency multiplier to achieve an N - 1 times frequency multiplication, which is then mixed with an external injection signal at an electrical mixer in the OEO loop. By adjusting the round-trip gain and time delay of the OEO loop, a radio frequency (RF) signal with a frequency that is 1/ N that of the injection signal is generated, thus N times frequency division is achieved. Theoretical analysis and experimental verification are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed ILFD. The results demonstrate that the system can divide an RF signal from 2.6 to 20.8 GHz to 1.3-1.95 GHz with different frequency division factors ranging from 2 to 13. A significant improvement in phase noise of 35.11 dB is also obtained at a frequency offset of 100 kHz when the frequency division factor is 13.