Highly Stable Millimeter-Wave Signal Distribution With an Optical Round-Trip Phase Stabilizer

Highly stable millimeter-wave signal distribution technique is required for a recent radio interferometry. In the photonic local system, two coherent optical signals are transmitted and converted into a millimeter-wave signal by a photomixer in the antenna. During the signal transmission through the fiber cable, the cable length delay fluctuation is caused together with polarization mode dispersion, which will impact the performance of coherent signal distribution. In this paper, we present the test results of a prototype roundtrip phase stabilizer.