A highly sensitive and precise temperature sensor based on optoelectronic oscillator

Abstract We proposed and demonstrated an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) based temperature sensor with high sensitivity and precision. The sensor is realized using a silicon-on-insulator-based microring resonator (MRR) and a dual-loop structure. The MRR, which acts as a sensing probe, is optimized and designed to have an ultra-high Q factor and high sensitivity to temperature variations simultaneously. The dual-loop structure is used to further stabilize the oscillating frequency of OEO. By doing so, we achieved an on-chip temperature sensor with a sensing precision of ± 1 . 73 × 10−4 ∘ C. Meanwhile, the sensing resolution and sensitivity are 6.79 × 10−3 ∘ C and 10.02 GHz/ ∘ C, respectively. The impact of the size of the MRR on the temperature sensor is also investigated.