Advanced fiber Bragg gratings for photonic generation and processing of arbitrary microwave waveforms

Abstract

Photonic generation and processing of microwave arbitrary waveforms has been a topic of interest recently. Compared with the electronic techniques, photonics techniques provide the capabilities of generating and processing high-frequency and large-bandwidth microwave waveforms which cannot be fulfilled by the electronic techniques, In this paper, techniques to generate and process microwave arbitrary waveforms in the optical domain using advanced fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are reviewed, with an emphasis on the system architectures in which FBGs are employed as spectral shapers or optical filters. The challenges in using FBGs for microwave arbitrary waveform generation and processing are also discussed.