Characterization of Optical Frequency Transfer Over 154 km of Aerial Fiber

TL;DR

This paper measures and analyzes the stability and noise of optical frequency transfer over 154 km of aerial fiber, highlighting wind-loading as a key noise source and attempting stabilization.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of optical frequency transfer stability over long aerial fiber links and investigates noise sources and stabilization methods.

Findings

Frequency transfer stability reaches 10^-11 at 1s and 10^-12 after 100s.

Wind-loading is identified as the dominant short-term noise source.

An attempt at stabilization of the optical frequency transfer is reported.

Abstract

We present measurements of the frequency transfer stability and analysis of the noise characteristics of an optical signal propagating over aerial suspended fiber links up to 153.6 km in length. The measured frequency transfer stability over these links is on the order of 10^-11 at an integration time of one second dropping to 10^-12 for integration times longer than 100 s. We show that wind-loading of the cable spans is the dominant source of short-timescale noise on the fiber links. We also report an attempt to stabilize the optical frequency transfer over these aerial links.