High-Q cascaded single-passband microwave photonic filter based on an optical-electrical feedback loop

A cascaded microwave photonic filter refers to a microwave photonic filter (MPF) with higher performance obtained by cascading a MPF with two different structures. A high-Q cascaded single-passband MPF is proposed experimentally based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and an optical-electrical feedback loop (OEFL). In this experiment, the pump light of SBS is provided by a tunable laser. The Brillouin gain spectrum generated by the pump light is used to amplify the phase modulation sideband, and the narrow linewidth OEFL is subsequently used to compress the passband width of the MPF. By carefully adjusting the pump wavelength and tuning the tunable optical delay line, stable tuning can be achieved for a cascaded single-passband MPF with a high-Q value. The results have demonstrated that the MPF has characteristics of high-frequency selectivity and a wide frequency tuning range. Meanwhile, the filtering bandwidth is up to 300 kHz, the out-of-band suppression is more than 20 dB, the maximum Q-value is 5.333×10⁴, and the center frequency tuning range is 1-17 GHz. The cascaded MPF proposed not only achieves a higher Q-value, but also has the advantages of tunability, a high out-of-band rejection ratio, and strong cascaded ability.