Tunable Photonic Microwave Filter Using a Superstructured FBG With Two Reflection Bands Having Complementary Chirps

A tunable photonic microwave bandpass filter using a superstructured fiber Bragg grating (SFBG) with two reflection bands having complementary chirps is proposed. Being different from a regular chirped FBG, which is usually fabricated using a chirped phase mask with a fixed chirp rate, the SFBG with complementary chirps is fabricated using a uniform phase mask and a chirped sampling function. The chirp rate of the sampling function can be designed to realize specific equivalent chirp rates that are complementary in the 1st-order and the 1st-order reflection bands of the SFBG. An SFBG with complementary chirps is fabricated and characterized. The use of the SFBG to implement a photonic tunable microwave filter with a negative coefficient is experimentally demonstrated.