Arbitrary-shaped Brillouin microwave photonic filter by manipulating a directly modulated pump

We present a cost-effective gigahertz-wide arbitrary-shaped microwave photonic filter based on stimulated Brillouin scattering in fiber using a directly modulated laser (DML). After analyzing the relationship between the spectral power density and the modulation current of the DML, we manage to precisely adjust the optical spectrum of the DML, thereby controlling the Brillouin filter response arbitrarily for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The filter performance is evaluated by amplifying a 500 Mb/s non-return-to-zero on-off keying signal using a 1 GHz rectangular filter. The comparison between the proposed DML approach and the previous approach adopting a complex IQ modulator shows similar filter flexibility, shape fidelity, and noise performance, proving that the DML-based Brillouin filter technique is a cost-effective and valid solution for microwave photonic applications.