Volume 6, Issue 4 (April 2019), Pages: 65-74

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 Original Research Paper

 Title: A photonic frequency discriminator based laser linewidth estimation technique

 Author(s): M. R. H. Khan *, M. A. Hoque

 Affiliation(s):

 Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Islamic University of Technology, Dhaka, Gazipur 1704, Bangladesh

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 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1946-0096

 Digital Object Identifier: 

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2019.04.008

 Abstract:

The conventional methods on the measurement of linewidth of an individual laser or free-running beat spectrum are unable to realize both direct and accurate measurement/estimation all at once. An optical measurement or estimation technique is necessary for very high frequency optical system. The direct measurement of the optical spectrum from an RF-SA suffers from the frequency jitter, hence provides an inaccurate measurement. On the other hand methods to estimate the RF beat linewidth without directly measuring the RF spectrum are limited in terms of frequency range. We propose to use an optical discriminator to estimate the beat spectrum linewidth of a free running heterodyning system. Using a dense wavelength multiplexing (DWDM) filter as an optical discriminator, the transformation of phase modulation (PM) to intensity modulation (IM) is achieved. So, transformed laser phase noise into RIN (relative intensity noise). The proposed concept for beat spectrum linewidth estimate is shown and compared to other direct/indirect beat spectrum measurement techniques. Our proposed technique estimates the beat linewidth more accurately and by direct measurements of the beat spectrum. Moreover, the proposed technique operates in optical domain, thus not limited in frequency range. This technique is not affected by frequency jitter unlike the other methods for beat spectrum linewidth measurement. 

 © 2019 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords: Frequency discriminator, Free running heterodyning, Beat spectrum, Narrow linewidth, Frequency jitter

 Article History: Received 2 November 2018, Received in revised form 10 February 2019, Accepted 10 February 2019

 Acknowledgement:

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Smart Mix Programme of the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest:  The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

 Citation:

  Khan MRH and Hoque MA (2019). A photonic frequency discriminator based laser linewidth estimation technique. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 6(4): 65-74

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 Figures

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 Tables

 Table 1

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