Abstract:Microwave photonic radio-frequency (RF) frontends, exhibiting the advantages of large frequency coverage, reconfigurable operation frequency bands and instantaneous bandwidths, and immunity to electromagnetic interference, have shown great potential in wireless communication, software-defined radio, radar systems, and electronic warfare. To further balance the performance superiority with the requirements of miniaturized application scenarios on size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), the implementation of integrated microwave photonic RF frontends has been considered as an upgrade path. In this article, the challenges of the demonstration of integrated microwave photonic RF frontends are briefly analyzed from the device design to the microsystem integration, and then the research of our group on the hybrid integrated reconfigurable microwave photonic RF frontend are presented from such three aspects:the design of reconfigurable narrowband integrated photonic filters, the architecture of hybrid integrated microsystems, and the method for suppressing the frequency drift.