Broad photonic-based Tunable High Quality Factor RF Filter

Leveraging Agiltron"s industrial leading developments and production of high speed fiber optical components and modules as well as commercial photonic devices, we propose to develop a new class of high performance tunable RF filters and filter banks for advanced RF systems. The approach is closely coupled with recent progress in photonic devices and fiber optic devices to push the filter performance well beyond current state-of-the-art. The proposed filter is entirely photonic based and only connected by optical fiber, providing a high quality factor with tunable center frequency and with potential tunable bandwidth and shape factor with miniature size. This innovative design has multiple improvements that overcome the deficiencies associated with conventional approaches in limited bandwidth and quality factor without making trade-offs. The technical approach will be proven in Phase I through numerical analysis, and design. The compact prototype filter bank will be produced in Phase II for delivery to DARPA.