Microwave photonics towards arbitrary RF filtering

Photonic signal processing opens up new capabilities for directly processing signals within optical fiber with high time-bandwidth operation and high-resolution performance. The approach overcomes the inherent bottlenecks caused by limited sampling speeds in conventional electrical signal processors and also has the immunity to electromagnetic interference. The new development of wideband signal processing towards arbitrary RF responses is presented in the paper with an emphasis on system architectures for tunable and reconfigurable operation, high resolution performance, and all-optical complex coefficients for arbitrary signal processing.