Photonic microwave filter based on SBS and balanced detection

In this paper, we present a new filter architecture to enhance the out-of-band rejection of SBS-based passband filters with the microwave signal amplitude modulated. The new architecture is based on SBS and balanced detection (between the SBS-filtered signal and the original signal). The out-of-band rejection is compared to conventional SBS-based photonic microwave filters relying on amplitude and phase modulation, reaching an improvement of 17 dB compared to amplitude modulation.