Proceedings Article | 23 January 2010
Proc. SPIE. 7620, Broadband Access Communication Technologies IV
KEYWORDS: Optical fibers, Optical filters, Dispersion, Semiconductor lasers, Heterodyning, Picosecond phenomena, Signal generators, Electronic filtering, Microwave radiation, Microwave photonic filters
The generation, distribution and processing of microwave signals in the optical domain is a topic of research
due to many advantages such as low loss, light weight, broadband width, and immunity to electromagnetic
interference. In this sense, a novel all-optical microwave photonic filter scheme is proposed and experimentally
demonstrated in the frequency range of 0.01-15.0 GHz. A microwave signal generated by optical mixing drives the
microwave photonic filter. Basically, photonic filter is composed by a multimode laser diode, an integrated Mach-
Zehnder intensity modulator, and 28.3-Km of single-mode standard fiber. Frequency response of the microwave
photonic filter depends of the emission spectral characteristics of the multimode laser diode, the physical length
of the single-mode standard fiber, and the chromatic dispersion factor associated to this type of fiber. Frequency
response of the photonic filter is composed of a low-pass band centered at zero frequency, and several band-pass
lobes located periodically on the microwave frequency range. Experimental results are compared by means of
numerical simulations in Matlab exhibiting a small deviation in the frequency range of 0.01-5.0 GHz. However,
this deviation is more evident when higher frequencies are reached. In this paper, we evaluate the causes of
this deviation in the range of 5.0-15.0 GHz analyzing the parameters involved in the frequency response. This
analysis permits to improve the performance of the photonic microwave filter to higher frequencies.
