Tunable X-band opto-electronic synthesizer with ultralow phase noise

Modern communication, navigation, and radar systems rely on low noise and frequency-agile microwave sources. In this application space, photonic systems provide an attractive alternative to conventional microwave synthesis by leveraging high spectral purity lasers and optical frequency combs to generate microwaves with exceedingly low phase noise. However, these photonic techniques suffer from a lack of frequency tunability, and also have substantial size, weight, and power requirements that largely limit their use to laboratory settings. In this work, we address these shortcomings with a hybrid opto-electronic approach that combines simplified optical frequency division with direct digital synthesis to produce tunable low-phase-noise microwaves across the entire X-band. This results in exceptional phase noise at 10 GHz of -156 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset and fractional frequency instability of 1x10^-13 at 0.1 s. Spot tuning away from 10 GHz by 500 MHz, 1 GHz, and 2 GHz, yields phase noise at 10 kHz offset of -150 dBc/Hz, -146 dBc/Hz, and -140 dBc/Hz, respectively. The synthesizer architecture is fully compatible with integrated photonic implementations that will enable a versatile microwave source in a chip-scale package. Together, these advances illustrate an impactful and practical synthesis technique that shares the combined benefits of low timing noise provided by photonics and the frequency agility of established digital synthesis.