A variable coefficient microwave photonic filter based on multi-wavelength fiber laser and Mach-Zehnder interferometer

A microwave photonic filter (MPF) with variable coefficient is proposed and demonstrated, which is constructed by a multi-wavelength fiber laser and Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Through changing the slope characteristics of Mach-Zehnder interference spectrum adjusted by optical variable delay line (OVDL), the conversion from phase modulation (PM) to intensity modulation (IM) is realized. The multi-wavelength fiber laser with Lyot-Sagnac optical filter has variable wavelength spacing. So the designed filter has a variable number of taps and tap weights. As a result, the tunable range of passband center frequency is 2.6 GHz. The reconfigurability of MPF can be also realized by adjusting the output of fiber laser.