Noise conversion in delay-line optoelectronic microwave oscillators

We report the results of theoretical and experimental studies of noise in a delay-line optoelectronic microwave oscillator with optical gain. The effect of various noise sources on the parameters of an optoelectronic microwave oscillator is considered, and, in addition to the noise of its individual components, several linear and nonlinear mechanisms for converting optical carrier noise into microwave signal noise are taken into account. It is shown that, due to the nonlinearity of the energy characteristics of high-power microwave photodiodes in an optoelectronic generator, the lowfrequency components of the laser relative intensity noise are converted into microwave signal noise, as a result of which sources of correlated amplitude and phase noise appear in the oscillator loop.