Comb-based radio-frequency photonic filtering with 20 ns bandwidth reconfiguration

Abstract

We present a scheme to generate a 10 GHz optical frequency comb that is bandwidth reconfigurable on a time scale of tens of nanoseconds via electronic control of the drive signal to a phase modulator. When such a comb is used as the source for a radio-frequency (RF) photonic filter employing dispersive propagation, the RF filter bandwidth varies in inverse proportion to the optical bandwidth. As a result we are able to demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, bandwidth-reconfigurable RF filtering with transition times under 20 ns. The reconfiguration speed is determined by the response time of a programmable RF variable attenuator.