Highly Chirped Reconfigurable Microwave Photonic Filter

A photonic structure is proposed to implement a chirped single-bandpass filter based on a broadband optical source, an inteferometric structure, and a nonlinear dispersive element. The ability of controlling a quasi-linear chirp in the passband by using the dispersive element in addition to the possibility of tuning and reconfiguring the passband by means of a proper configuration of the interferometric structure and the optical source are special and unique features of the system proposed. Moreover, the flexibility of the proposed filter permits us to achieve an operation range up to tens of gigahertz improving the chirp achieved by current proposals in one order of magnitude.