A Monolithically Integrated and Widely Tunable Silicon Photonic Microwave Photonic Filter

A monolithically integrated and widely frequency-tunable silicon photonic microwave photonic filter (MPF) is reported. All components including a grating coupler, a wideband phase modulator, a high Q factor ring resonator and wideband a photodetector (PD) are monolithically integrated on a silicon photonic chip. The passband functionality is implemented by translating the spectral response of the ring resonator to the microwave domain based on phase modulation to intensity modulation conversion. The frequency tunability is implemented by tuning the wavelength of the optical carrier injected into the chip. The proposed MPF is fabricated and its performance is experimentally evaluated. The 3-dB bandwidth is measured to be 2.7 GHz and the frequency-tunable range is 12 GHz.