Compress sensing (CS) is a recently developed approach for the acquisition of sparse signals. According to the CS theory, a spectrally sparse signal can be sampled with a sampling rate far lower than that required by the Nyquist theorem and recovered with a high resolution. Application of CS in the field of wideband signals acquisition is highly desirable as the sampling rate of analog todigital converters (ADCs) can be greatly lowered. More recently, CS for sparse signal acquisition based on photonic techniques has attracted much interest. The photonic techniques and components help to enlarge bandwidth. It makes the photonics assisted CS a promising method for the ultra wideband sparse signals acquisition. The recent developments of the photonics assisted CS in the application of sparse signal acquisition are reviewed. Research achievements by our group are also presented.