Tunable Photonic Microwave Delay Line Filter Based on Fabry-Perot Laser Diode

We report the physical implementation of a tunable photonic microwave delay line filter based on injection locking of a single Fabry-Perot laser diode (FP-LD) to a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA). The laser generates equally spaced multiple wavelengths and a single tapped-delay line can be obtained with a dispersive single mode fiber. The filter frequency response depends on the wavelength spacing and can be tuned by the temperature of the FP-LD varying lasing wavelength. For amplitude control of the wavelengths, we use gain saturation of the RSOA and the offset between the peak wavelengths of the FP-LD and the RSOA to decrease the amplitude difference in the wavelengths. From the temperature change of total 15°C, the filter, consisting of four flat wavelengths and two wavelengths with slightly lower amplitudes on both sides, has shown tunability of about 390 MHz.