Improving suppression ratio of microwave photonic filters using high-precision spectral shaping

The main-to-sidelobe suppression ratio (MSSR) is significant to filters. The tap weight errors worsen the MSSR of the finite impulse response (FIR) microwave photonic filters (MPFs). The MSSR can be improved by shaping the multicarrier optical source spectra with high precision. By compensating the errors with an iteration method, the sidelobes of the amplitude response can be optimized to increase the MSSR. Such a method is simple, effective, and compatible with all FIR MPF approaches. In the experiment, optical spectra of Gaussian profiles were taken as an example, and an MSSR improvement from 50 to 63 dB was demonstrated. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)