Filtered microwave photonic links: models and figures of merit

We propose the concept of filtered Microwave Photonic Links as those providing the most general and versatile description of complex analog photonic systems. Expressions leading to the computation of their main figures of merit are provided which, to our knowledge, are not available in the literature and can be useful as figure of merit results for complex links can be directly obtained from them just by substituting, in the overall closed-form expressions, the numerical or measured optical transfer function characterizing the link.