Optics represents an elegant and reliable solution to generate high spectral purity microwave signals, especially the approach using the optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). The spectral purity of these sources is very important for space and military applications and also for time and frequency domain metrology. During this thesis, we have fabricated and studied many types of resonator based OEO in order to optimize the system phase noise. We have especially investigated an original approach using a passive fiber ring resonator (FRR). This resonator type can feature optical quality factors higher than 109 when only few meters of optical fibers are used (L ~ 10 m) and it can be easily integrated in a planar setup. Moreover, we have performed an important work on 3D WGM resonators based oscillators. In the FRR based OEO, spectacular progresses have been achieved thanks to a good understanding of the system intrinsic noise phenomena. Actually, we have found that the most important noise parameters were the laser FM and AM noise conversion into RF phase noise by means of different nonlinearities in the system (like the photodiode nonlinearity), but also by the generation of nonlinear optical effects inside the resonator. By controlling these effects, we have been able to reduce the OEO phase noise level and to reach a -128 dBc/Hz noise level at 10 kHz offset frequency from a 10.2 GHz carrier. This has been achieved using an OEO based on a 100m-long passive FRR, which has been optimized and immunized against different nonlinear optical effects.
