A microphotonic transversal RF signal processor with no laser-coherence noise

In this paper, the impact of laser coherence on transversal photonic RF signal processors is investigated and a new MicroPhotonic adaptive RF filter structure, which eliminates the phased-induced intensity noise, is proposed and demonstrated. It is shown that the phase-induced intensity noise caused by the laser-source coherence significantly degrades the RF frequency response of a transversal photonic RF filter, hence, limiting its performance. The results show that the MicroPhotonic RF filter is capable of generating an arbitrary transfer function with no phase-induced intensity noise.