Integrated SOI High-Order Phase-Shifted Bragg Grating for Microwave Photonics Signal Processing

An integrated high-order phase-shifted Bragg grating, comprising six quarter-wave sections between Bragg grating mirrors in a laterally-corrugated strip waveguide has been realized in silicon-on-insulator technology. A box-like transmission window is created within the 10-nm-wide grating reflection band, realizing a sharp bandpass optical filter with out-of-band rejection exceeding 40 dB and a steep roll-off of similar to 300 dB/nm in the transition band. The sharp optical filter has been experimentally tested in microwave photonics (MWP) signal processing applications, namely spectral separation of an optical sideband comprising 1.25 Gb/s data from a 15-GHz-spaced carrier, and sideband suppression for dispersion compensation in a radio-over-fiber link. The results of the characterizations indicate negligible power penalty in terms of bit-error rate for the sideband separation and robust mitigation of dispersion-induced transmission impairment. The device has an ultrasmall footprint of similar to 450x0.5 mu m(2), and can bemonolithically integrated with germanium photodiodes or silicon modulators as well as other passive subsystems to implement advanced on-chip MWP signal processing functionalities.