Development of a Mach-Zehnder Modulator Photonic Local Oscillator Source

TL;DR

This paper presents a photonic local oscillator source using a 3-stage Mach-Zehnder modulator, enabling wide frequency coverage, rapid tuning, and low phase noise for radio astronomy applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MZM-based photonic LO source with wide tunability, fast tuning speed, and low phase noise, suitable for large telescope systems.

Findings

Frequency coverage of 4-130 GHz achieved

Tuning speed of approximately 0.2 seconds

Residual phase noise of 0.3 degrees RMS at 100 GHz

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a photonic local oscillator (LO) source based on a 3-stage Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) device. The MZM laser synthesizer demonstrates the feasibility of providing the photonic reference LO for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array telescope located in Chile. This MZM approach to generating an LO by radio RF modulation of a monochromatic optical source provides the merits of wide frequency coverage of 4-130 GHz, tuning speed of about 0.2 seconds, and residual integrated phase noise performance of 0.3 degrees RMS at 100 GHz.