Correcting sampling oscilloscope timebase errors with a passively mode-locked laser that is phase-locked to a microwave oscillator

Published

April 1, 2010

Author(s)

Jeffrey A. Jargon, Paul D. Hale, Chih-Ming Wang

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an apparatus for correcting the timebase errors when calibrating the response of an equivalent-time sampling oscilloscope using a passively mode-locked erbium doped fiber laser that is phase locked to a microwave signal generator. This enables us to simultaneously correct both the random jitter and the systematic timebase distortion in the oscilloscope. As a demonstration of the technique, we measure the electrical pulse generated by a fast photodiode that is excited by our laser. We show that the pulse that is reconstructed using our technique has significantly lower uncertainty that the pulse that is reconstructed using a separate correction for timebase distortion followed by jitter deconvolution.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Volume

59

Issue

4

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

mode-locked laser, phase-lock loop, sampling oscilloscope, timebase correction

Citation

Jargon, J. , Hale, P. and Wang, C. (2010), Correcting sampling oscilloscope timebase errors with a passively mode-locked laser that is phase-locked to a microwave oscillator, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=900876 (Accessed October 13, 2025)