Wideband frequency tunable optoelectronic oscillator based on a dispersion compensated microwave photonic filter Jianghai Wo 1 • Anle Wang 1 • Jin Zhang 1 • Pengfei Du 1 • Yalan Wang 1 • Wenshan Cong 1 • Xin Xu 1 • Xiong Luo 1 • Lan Yu 1 Received: 9 June 2017 / Accepted: 16 November 2017 / Published online: 20 November 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2017 Abstract A wideband tunable optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) based on a dispersion compensated phase modulated microwave photonics filter (MPF) is proposed and exper- imentally demonstrated. The MPF, consisting of a tunable laser source (TLS), a phase modulator, a fiber Bragg grating Fabry–Perot filter and a photodetector, is used as the oscillating mode selection device. Dual-loop configuration is employed to make sure the OEO operates at a single oscillating mode. Theoretically analysis is carried out to demonstrate the tuning range limitation due to the phase-modulation to intensity-modu- lation conversion caused by long single mode fiber (SMF). To overcome this disadvantage and expand the signal tuning range, a dispersion compensation fiber is introduced followed by the SMF to compensate the fiber dispersion. By simply adjusting the wavelength of the TLS, an ultra-wideband tunable microwave signal with the frequency tuning range from 2 to 44 GHz is obtained. The phase noise is also investigated and measured to be less than - 110 dBc/Hz at an offset of 10 kHz within the whole frequency range. Keywords Microwave photonics  Microwave generation  Optoelectronic oscillator  Dispersion compensation 1 Introduction Microwave or millimeter wave generation with wideband tuning ability has great potential applications in numerous areas such as radar, signal processing, metrology, electronic warfare, optical and wireless communication systems since it not only can reduce system complexity and cost, but can also make it more convenient and flexible (Yao 2009; Yao Jianghai Wo and Anle Wang have contributed equally to this work. & Lan Yu yulann@163.com 1 Microwave Photonics Center, Wuhan Electronic Institute, Wuhan 430019, China 123 Opt Quant Electron (2017) 49:411 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-017-1252-8