An exceptional-point (EP) enhanced fiber-optic bending sensor is reported. The sensor is implemented based on parity-time (PT)-symmetry using two coupled Fabry-Perot (FP) resonators consisting of three cascaded fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) inscribed in an erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber (EYDF). The EP is achieved by controlling the pumping power to manipulate the gain and loss of the gain and loss FP resonators. Once a bending force is applied to the gain FP resonator to make the operation of the system away from its EP, frequency splitting occurs, and the frequency spacing is a nonlinear function of the bending curvature, with an increased slope near the EP. Thus, by measuring the frequency spacing, the bending information is measured with increased sensitivity. To achieve high-speed and high-resolution interrogation, the optical spectral response of the sensor is converted to the microwave domain by implementing a dual-passband microwave-photonic filter (MPF), with the spacing between the two passbands equal to that of the frequency splitting. The proposed sensor is evaluated experimentally. A curvature sensing range from 0.28 to 2.74 m^?1 is achieved with an accuracy of 7.56×10^?4 m^?1 and a sensitivity of 1.32 GHz/m^?1, which is more than 4 times higher than those reported previously.

An optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is a microwave photonic system that produces microwave signals with ultralow phase noise using a high-quality-factor optical energy storage element. This type of oscillator is desired in various practical applications, such as communication links, signal processing, radar, metrology, radio astronomy, and reference clock distribution. Recently, new mode control and selection methods based on Fourier domain mode-locking and parity-time symmetry have been proposed and experimentally demonstrated in OEOs, which overcomes the long-existing mode building time and mode selection problems in a traditional OEO. Due to these mode control and selection methods, continuously chirped microwave waveforms can be generated directly from the OEO cavity and single-mode operation can be achieved without the need of ultranarrowband filters, which are not possible in a traditional OEO. Integrated OEOs with a compact size and low power consumption have also been demonstrated, which are key steps toward a new generation of compact and versatile OEOs for demanding applications. We review recent progress in the field of OEOs, with particular attention to new mode control and selection methods, as well as chip-scale integration of OEOs.

A 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output coherent microwave photonic (MWP) link to transmit four wireless signals with an identical microwave center frequency over a single optical wavelength based on optical independent sideband (OISB) modulation and optical orthogonal modulation with an improved spectral efficiency is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. At the transmitter, the OISB modulation and optical orthogonal modulation are implemented to generate an OISB signal using a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM) driven by four microwave orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals with an identical microwave center frequency. At the receiver, the OISB signal is coherently detected at a coherent receiver where a free-running local oscillator (LO) laser source is employed. Digital signal processing is then used to recover the four OFDM signals, to eliminate the phase noise from the transmitter laser source and the LO laser source, and to cancel the unstable wavelength difference between the wavelengths of the transmitter laser source and the LO laser source. Error-free transmission of three 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) 1 Gbps OFDM signals and one 16-QAM 1.5 Gbps OFDM signal at a microwave center frequency of 2.91 GHz over a 10 km single-mode fiber is experimentally demonstrated.