Applications of fibre Bragg gratings to microwave photonics

Fibre gratings (FGs) have evolved in a few years from laboratory prototypes to commercial products. This has been the result of the combined effort carried by many research groups throughout the world in the development and refinement of fabrication techniques as well as in the development of potential applications. An interesting field of application is that of microwave photonics, where optical devices and systems are employed to generate, transport and process RF, microwave and millimetre wave signals. In this paper we describe some of the work that within this area has been recently carried out jointly by the Optical Communications Group of the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and the Optical Fibre Group of the Universidad de Valencia. The paper investigates separately some applications of Linearly Chirped Fibre Bragg Gratings (LCFBGs) and Uniform Fibre Bragg Gratings (UFBGs).