A 25–40 GHz Wideband Tunable Silicon Photonic Reconfigurable Receiver Front-End for mm-wave Channel Selection/Jammer Rejection

This paper presents a photonically-assisted reconfigurable receiver front-end (RXFE) for mm-wave applications performing both dynamic channel selection and jammer rejection. Demonstrating 25–40 GHz channel selection, it can also reduce RX IM3 by rejecting out-of-band jammers and hence improving overall RX linearity. The reconfigurable RXFE is implemented as a silicon photonic integrated circuit (Si-PIC) with a selective interface to either a CMOS RX or some other photonic/PIC system/chip. The PIC is implemented using silicon-over-insulator (SOI) process and measured across 25–40 GHz ranges showing 20 dB IM3 reduction at 30 GHz.