Microwave photonic filter with tunability, reconfigurability and bipolar taps

A new microwave photonic filter structure realising fully programmable RF filtering that can tune the filter centre frequency and also reconfigure the filter shape, while exhibiting multiple taps and bipolar taps, is presented. It is based on a new arbitrary spectrum slicing technique using a multi-port programmable wavelength processor, based on liquid crystal on silicon pixels, which offers programmable finite impulse response filtering using software control. Experimental results demonstrate a high-order microwave filter with tunability, reconfigurability, bipolar taps, and with high free spectral range.