Photonic microwave filter based on spectrum slicing with reconfiguration capability

A cost-effective technique based on the spectrum slicing of broadband optical sources using optical filters and attenuators to control the amplitude of optical samples of a photonic transversal microwave filter is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The technique allows the apodisation of the filter transfer function using a few components instead of previous architectures using as many attenuators or individual lasers as filter coefficients which are not feasible for practical filters with many taps.