Fiber radio frequency transfer using bidirectional frequency division multiplexing dissemination

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel fiber-optic RF transfer method using bidirectional FDM to suppress noise and achieve high stability over long distances, suitable for large-scale scientific networks.

Contribution

The paper presents a new bidirectional FDM scheme for fiber-optic RF transfer that improves noise suppression and stability, enabling scalable large-scale scientific applications.

Findings

Achieved 0.9 GHz RF transfer over 120 km fiber with high stability.

Demonstrated effective phase noise compensation at remote sites.

Showed potential for large-scale scientific network deployment.

Abstract

We report on the realization of a novel fiber-optic radio frequency (RF) transfer scheme with the bidirectional frequency division multiplexing (FDM) dissemination technique. Here, the proper bidirectional frequency map used in the forward and backward directions for suppressing the backscattering noise and ensuring the symmetry of the bidirectional transfer RF signals within one telecommunication channel. We experimentally demonstrated a 0.9 GHz signal transfer over a 120 km optical link with the relative frequency stabilities of 2.2E-14 at 1 s and 4.6E-17 at 20,000 s. The implementation of phase noise compensation at the remote site has the capability to perform RF transfer over a branching fiber network with the proposed technique as needed by large-scale scientific experiments.