Reconfiguring microwave photonic filters without an external device

Camille Brès et Jianqi Hu, autors of the article © 2020 Alain Herzog - Researchers from EPFL's Photonics Systems Lab have come up with a way of reconfiguring microwave photonic filters without the need for an external device. This paves the way for more compact, environmentally friendly filters that will be more practical and cheaper to use. Potential applications include detection and communications systems. The researchers' findings have recently been published. Photons look set to replace electrons in countless tasks, since they move faster and consume less energy. These tiny light particles also have the added benefit of being surprisingly flexible - their frequency range is 1,000 to 10,000 times larger than that of electrons. So using light rather than electricity to manipulate microwaves gives you a much broader bandwidth to work with.