Flexibly tunable microwave photonic FIR filter incorporating wavelength spacing programmable, arrayed micro-mirror based optical filter

A novel tunable microwave photonic FIR filter incorporating a wavelength spacing tunable multiwavelength filter based on a programmable arrayed micro-mirror device (AMMD) is demonstrated. Owing to the unique characteristic of the AMMD, that an arbitrary optical filter shape can be produced by defining a desired spatial pattern on an array of ∼800 000 micro-mirrors, a wavelength spacing tunable multiwavelength optical filtering pattern is readily obtainable. By controlling the optical filter wavelength spacing, flexible resonance RF frequency tuning is achieved over a range of 2.3 GHz.