High-performance microwave generation technology plays a pivotal role in electronic communication, radar, and sensing systems. Traditional electronic approaches, however, suffer from a notable degradation in noise performance at elevated frequencies. While microwave photonic technology can harness the high-frequency attributes of light waves to mitigate this challenge and has the potential to produce low-noise microwaves, its inherent complexity and bulkiness hinder practical deployment. To overcome this obstacle, the research team has engineered a compact oscillator centered around an optically locked micro-optical reference. By employing a dual-laser self-injection locking strategy, the oscillator synchronously locks two distributed feedback lasers to an ultra-high-Q Fabry-Pérot cavity with a mere volume of 1 mL. This design effectively curtails common-mode noise, achieving a noise suppression effect surpassing 20 dB.
