Tunable and reconfigurable bandpass microwave photonic filters utilizing integrated optical processor on silicon-on-insulator substrate

A tunable and reconfigurable bandpass microwave photonic filter based on an integrated optical processor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The optical processor based on microrings, Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and Y-branches is utilized to produce two bandpass responses for separately processing optical carrier and sideband. Moreover, the microwave responses can be varied by thermal tuning the resonance of microrings. According to the experimental results, the operating frequency and - 3 - dB bandwidth can be tuned from 18 to 40 GHz and from 5 to 15 GHz, respectively.