Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the programmable photonic radio frequency (RF) filters based on an integrated Fabry–Pérot laser with a saturable absorber (FP-SA). Owing to the high output power and the relative flatness spectrum of the FP-SA laser, only a waveshaper and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) were needed, which can greatly reduce the complexity of the system. The sinc filter employed 87 taps, representing a record-high tap number and resulting in a 3-dB bandwidth of 0.27 GHz and a quality factor of 148. Furthermore, Gaussian apodization enabled the out-of-band rejection of the filter to reach 34 dB and the center frequency to be finely tuned over a wide range, spanning from 4 to 14 GHz. These results indicate that the proposed scheme could provide a promising guideline for the photonic RF filters that demand both high reconfigurability and greatly reduced size and complexity.

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