High stability optoelectronic oscillator and method

An optoelectronic oscillator (OEO), comprising:

• a set of optical domain components;
• a downconverter in communication with an output of the set of optical domain components;
• a set of radio frequency (RF) domain components in communication with an output of the downconverter, the set of RF domain components including:
• a mode selection filter in communication with the output of the downconverter, the mode selection filter configured to output a mode selection result;
• a drift compensation circuit configured to receive the mode selection result from the mode selection filter and to phase modulate the mode selection result, based on a stored total phase drift, in a vector based coordinate system, for outputting a drift compensated mode selection result;
• and
• a phase locked loop (PLL) in communication with the drift compensation circuit, the PLL configured to detect a phase difference between a local oscillator signal and the drift compensated mode selection result for use in maintaining the PLL in a phase lock with the local oscillator signal, an output of the PLL being coupled to an input of the set of optical domain components, and
• the drift compensation circuit being configured to:
• receive the detected phase difference from the PLL;
• and
• update the stored total phase drift based on the received detected phase difference, for use in maintaining the drift compensated mode selection result within a locking bandwidth of the PLL.