Highly reconfigurable silicon integrated microwave photonic filter towards next-generation wireless communication

Integrated microwave photonic filters(IMPFs)are capable of offering unparalleled performances in terms of superb spectral fineness,broadband,and more importantly,the reconfigurability,which encounter the trend of the next-generation wireless communication.However,to achieve high reconfigurability,previous works should adopt complicated system structures and modulation formats,which put great pressure on power consumption and controlment,and,therefore,impede the massive deployment of IMPF.Here,we propose a streamlined architecture for a wideband and highly reconfigurable IMPF on the silicon photonics platform.For various practical filter responses,to avoid complex auxiliary devices and bias drift problems,a phase-modulated flexible sideband cancellation method is employed based on the intensity-consistent single-stage-adjustable cascadedmicroring(ICSSA-CM).The IMPF exhibits an operation band extending to millimeter-wave(≥30 GHz),and other extraordinary performances including high spectral resolution of 220 MHz and large rejection ratio of 60 d B are obtained.Moreover,Gb/s-level RF wireless communications are demonstrated for the first time towards real-world scenarios.The proposed IMPF provides broadband flexible spectrum control capabilities,showing great potential in the next-generation wireless communication.