Time-Frequency Transfer over Optical Fiber

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in optical two-way time-frequency transfer over fiber, highlighting system configurations, challenges, and future prospects for global high-precision clock networks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in optical time-frequency transfer, emphasizing recent progress and future directions.

Findings

Characterized stability of optical time-frequency transfer

Analyzed system configurations and transfer methods

Outlined challenges and future applications

Abstract

Optical time-frequency transfer establishes the metrological linkage in large-scale clock networks, which facilitates various applications. Fiber-based transfer benefits from the abundant deployment of fiber infrastructures to achieve this advantage. In this Review, we provide an overview of the advances in optical two-way time-frequency transfer, which began with characterizing the time-frequency transfer stability. Then, we discuss the system configuration, key modules, main challenges, and mainstream transfer methods. Finally, the Review concludes with an outlook on further applications toward global-scale high-precision clock networks.