Photonic microwave frequency divider with a tunable division ratio and harmonic suppression capability.

A photonic microwave frequency divider that is capable to realise tunable high order frequency division, is presented. It is based on injecting an RF phase modulated optical signal into an off-the-shelf DFB laser operating at period-N state. Optical frequency components with a frequency separation of 1/N times the input RF signal frequency are generated by the DFB laser. An optical bandpass filter can be employed to select two optical frequency components to be detected by a photodetector to obt...