Programmable Multichannel‐Parallel Microwave Photonic Processor on Silicon

Abstract Programmable microwave photonic processors leverage photonic technologies to enable adaptive microwave functionalities with ultra‐wide bandwidth, high speed, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. Integrated with silicon photonics, they offer potential for reduced size, cost, and power consumption. However, scaling these systems for more advanced processing is challenging due to high silicon waveguide losses and programming complexity. Here, a programmable silicon‐based multichannel‐parallel microwave photonic signal processor (MPMWP) is proposed that interleaves temporal and wavelength dimensions. The processor integrates 32‐channel tunable delay lines featuring ultra‐low‐loss broadened waveguides and low‐phase‐error Mach‐Zehnder interferometers for precise delay control, and 8 pairs of dual‐elliptical microrings for wavelength selection and amplitude tuning. This architecture overcomes scalability and loss issues, offering a low‐loss, highly scalable, and simplified control architecture. The processor can be programmed for advanced microwave photonic functionalities, including multi‐beam parallel microwave photonic beamforming, tunable microwave photonic filter, multi‐order reconfigurable microwave photonic differentiator, and high‐speed arbitrary waveform generation, representing a step toward large‐scale, high‐performance microwave photonic systems.