Investigation of the Long-Term Stability of a Local Oscillator Generator Based on InP-Si3N4 Laser Source for Satellite Payloads Articles uri icon

publication date

  • July 2024

start page

  • 4365

end page

  • 4371

volume

  • 42

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0733-8724

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1558-2213

abstract

  • We report an experimental characterization of thelong-term stability of a local oscillator (LO) signal generation mod-ule for satellite communications based on the optical heterodyningof two InP/Si3N4hybrid integrated lasers. Specifically, we analyzesimultaneously the wavelength drift of both lasers in the opticaldomain and the electrical drift of the generated radiofrequency(RF) beat between the lasers. We identify the main factors thatcontribute to the overall drift such as the electrical noise comingfrom the supply sources, the thermal noise coming from the tem-perature control unit, and the thermal crosstalk between lasers.This investigation compares the stability of an RF signal gener-ated by two approaches. Using two integrated lasers and using acombination of one integrated laser with one external laser. Thiswork also analyzes the difference when lasers are mounted overa standard breadboard with a thermally-controlled. The resultsshow that the best approach is to use both integrated lasers onthe same chip. We report a 25 GHz RF signal with long-termstability of 30 MHz measured over 10 hours under free-runningoperation mode. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate thatintegrated lasers can be stabilized by using injection locking. We experimentally demonstrate the optical injection locking of two hybrid InP/Si3N4lasers when the leader laser and the followerlaser are both hybrid integrated lasers of same system on chip.When the laser is locked, we report a locking range of 1.86 GHz