Highly reconfigurable silicon integrated microwave photonic filter towards next-generation wireless communication

Abstract

Integrated microwave photonic filters (IMPFs) are capable of offering unparalleled performances in terms of superb spectral fineness, broadband, and more importantly, the reconfigurability, which encounter the trend of the next-generation wireless communication. However, to achieve high reconfigurability, previous works should adopt complicated system structures and modulation formats, which put great pressure on power consumption and controlment, and, therefore, impede the massive deployment of IMPF. Here, we propose a streamlined architecture for a wideband and highly reconfigurable IMPF on the silicon photonics platform. For various practical filter responses, to avoid complex auxiliary devices and bias drift problems, a phase-modulated flexible sideband cancellation method is employed based on the intensity-consistent single-stage-adjustable cascaded-microring (ICSSA-CM). The IMPF exhibits an operation band extending to millimeter-wave (≥30 GHz), and other extraordinary performances including high spectral resolution of 220 MHz and large rejection ratio of 60 dB are obtained. Moreover, Gb/s-level RF wireless communications are demonstrated for the first time towards real-world scenarios. The proposed IMPF provides broadband flexible spectrum control capabilities, showing great potential in the next-generation wireless communication.

Wideband‐Tunable on‐Chip Microwave Photonic Filter with Ultrahigh‐Q U‐Bend‐Mach–Zehnder‐Interferometer‐Coupled Microring Resonators

“…[10][11][12] The present silicon photonic filter has an overall footprint of 0.082 mm 2 and a large FSR of 113 GHz, enabling a tuning range as wide as 40 GHz (covering L-Ka bands), which is better than most silicon MPFs based on high-Q resonators. [19][20][21][22][23] Utilizing the U-bend-MZI-coupler ensures the MRR to have lowloss transmissions, improved ERs and high tunability for the 3 dB bandwidth. More importantly, we introduce the structure with Ubend-MZI-coupled MRRs in cascade, which are integrated with the DDMZM and the photodetector on a single chip.…”

“…[19] By employing an intensity-consistent single-stage-adjustable cascaded-microring, the 3 dB bandwidth can be tuned from 0.27 to 2 GHz. [20] Regarding the practical applications, it is still desired to significantly improve the filtering performance for widely tuning the frequency up to 40 GHz (covering L-Ka bands) and widely tunable 3 dB bandwidth in the range from sub-GHz to several GHz. [21] Accordingly, one of the keys is to developing high-performance resonator with a high-Q factor and a large FSR.…”

“…In recent years, several silicon IMPFs have been demonstrated. [ 17,18 19 20 ] An early example of a silicon IMPF consisting of a phase modulator, a microdisk resonator, and a photodetector was reported with a bandwidth of 1.93 GHz, a frequency tunable range of 3–10 GHz, and an ER of 15 dB. [ 18 ] Unfortunately, due to the immature fabrication processes in the early years, the device performance is still too limited to support the functionality demonstration.…”

“…[ 19 ] By employing an intensity‐consistent single‐stage‐adjustable cascaded‐microring, the 3 dB bandwidth can be tuned from 0.27 to 2 GHz. [ 20 ]…”

Chip‐Based Microwave Photonic Payload Repeater for High Throughput Satellites

“…[4,5] Compared with microwave IC technology, the PIC can also bring flexibility, scalability, customization, and cost reduction to satellite payloads. [6] So far, on the one hand, PIC work focused on specific RF functionalities such as RF delay lines, [7] optical spectral shaper, [8,9,28] programmable mesh topologies, [10,11,29] and RF photonic integrated filter, [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][30][31][32][33][34] has been widely reported. Typical photonic integrated filters are based on Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI) or ring-assisted MZI (RAMZI) to fulfill diverse functionalities.…”