Photonic compressive sensing for analog-to-information conversion with a delay-line based microwave photonic filter

Compressive sensing (CS) in the photonic domain is highly promising for analog-to-information conversion of sparse signals due to its potential capability of high input bandwidth and digitization with sub-Nyquist sampling. In this paper, we suggest that the concept of delay-line based microwave photonic filter be used in photonic CS to realize the low-pass filtering (LPF) function which is required in CS. A microwave photonic filter (MPF) with a dispersive element and fiber delay lines is applied in photonic CS to achieve better performance and flexibility. In the approach, the input radio-frequency signal and the pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS) are modulated on a multi-wavelength optical carrier and propagate through a dispersive element. The modulated optical signal is split into multiple channels with tunable delay lines. The multiple wavelengths, dispersive element and multiple channels constitute a reconfigurable low-pass microwave filter. Experiment and simulations are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and potentials of this approach.