Oscillation power of opto-electronic oscillator limited by nonlinearities of mach-zehnder modulator and microwave amplifier

We proposed an analytical model to calculate the oscillation power of opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) considering the nonlinearities of both MZ-modulator and microwave amplifier. Compared with traditional models which do not consider the nonlinearity of the microwave amplifier, our model can predict the oscillation power more accurately under the condition that the nonlinearity of microwave amplifier is significant. Our experiments indicated that the saturated oscillating power predicted by our model is in consistent with the experimental data, while traditional model is about 10dB larger in the case that the microwave amplifier's nonlinearity is more significant than that of the MZ modulator.