Microwave photonic filters are photonic subsystems designed with the aim of carrying equivalent tasks to those of an ordinary microwave filter within a radio frequency (RF) system or link, bringing supplementary advantages inherent to photonics such as low loss, high bandwidth, immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI), tunability, and reconfigurability. There is an increasing interest in this subject since, on one hand, emerging broadband wireless access networks and standards spanning from universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) to fixed access picocellular networks and including wireless local area network (WLAN), World Interoperability for Microwave Access, Inc. (WIMAX), local multipoint distribution service (LMDS), etc., require an increase in capacity by reducing the coverage area. An enabling technology to obtain this objective is based on radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems where signal processing is carried at a central office to where signals are carried from inexpensive remote antenna units (RAUs). On the other hand, microwave photonic filters can find applications in specialized fields such as radar and photonic beamsteering of phased-arrayed antennas, where dynamical reconfiguration is an added value. This paper provides a tutorial introduction of this subject to the reader not working directly in the field but interested in getting an overall introduction of the subject and also to the researcher wishing to get a comprehensive background before working on the subject.

This paper presents the fundamental principles and recent advances in the field of photonic filtering of microwave signals using discrete-time incoherent processing. We also provide a comprehensive review of the fundamentals, applications, and current state of the art.

Silicon nitride photonics is on the rise owing to the broadband nature of the material, allowing applications of biophotonics, tele/datacom, optical signal processing and sensing, from visible, through near to mid-infrared wavelengths. In this paper, a review of the state of the art of silicon nitride strip waveguide platforms is provided, alongside the experimental results on the development of a versatile 300 nm guiding film height silicon nitride platform.

The authors present the theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration of a novel single-bandpass tunable microwave filter. The filter is based on a broadband optical source and a fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer and shows a high Q factor over a tuning range of 5-17 GHz. A generalized analysis considering that the optical signal propagates along optical delay lines with a dispersion slope different from zero is presented.

We report on a novel technical approach to the implementation of photonic rf filters that is based on the $\pi$ phase inversion that a rf modulating signal suffers in an electro-optic Mach–Zehnder modulator, which depends on whether the positive or the negative linear slope of the signal’s modulation transfer function is employed. Experimental evidence is provided of the implementation of filters with negative coefficients that shows excellent agreement with results predicted by the theory.