Bandwidth-reconfigurable single-passband microwave photonic filter based on stimulated Brillouin scattering

A bandwidth-reconfigurable filter is necessary to meet the need of growing communication capacity and signal coverage frequency range. The stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain spectrum as a filter passband is used to extract desired microwave signals. Due to the fact that the passband is formed by mapping the Brillouin gain spectrum, bandwidth reconfigurability can be implemented by changing Brillouin gain linewidth. In this paper, a scheme using a 5-lines optical comb acting as a Brillouin pump is experimentally demonstrated. The spectrum of the 5-lines optical comb is extended by a binary phase shift keying (BPSK) pulse modulated signal. Experiments have shown that the 3-dB and 20-dB bandwidths of the filter are 196 MHz and 257 MHz, respectively, and its 20-dB shape factor is 1.31. The passband ripple is ~3.5 dBm with stop-band rejection of 20 dBm under 15 dBm optical pump power.