Tunable and Reconfigurable Bandstop Microwave Photonic Filter Based on Integrated Microrings and Mach–Zehnder Interferometer

A bandstop microwave photonic filter is experimentally demonstrated with integrated optical processor fabricated on silicon-on-insulator substrate. The optical processor consists of microrings and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer so that two bandstop responses are produced for processing two sidebands separately. With such a structure, tunable and reconfigurable bandstop MPFs can be easily realized by thermally tuning the resonant wavelength of microrings. According to the experimental results, the operating frequency and 10-dB bandwidth can be tuned within the range of 7-34 GHz and 1.85-4.55 GHz, respectively.