Spectrum steering: a new platform for wavelength filtering, switching, and monitoring

Gordon Wilson

doi:10.1117/12.636251

5 December 2005 Spectrum steering: a new platform for wavelength filtering, switching, and monitoring

Gordon Wilson

Proceedings Volume 6019, Passive Components and Fiber-based Devices II; 60190J (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.636251
Event: Asia-Pacific Optical Communications, 2005, Shanghai, China

Abstract

Spectrum steering is a new class of device architectures that use a MEMS mirror to steer a dispersed spectrum in two dimensions across a fixed spectral-plane spatial filter. Devices select among a set of pre-programmed filter shapes, inputs, or outputs and can tune the center wavelength of each filter. Spectrum-steering filters are not as generally flexible as devices with active spectral plane filters but are potentially more compact, lower cost, and simpler to control. We present two example spectrum-steering devices. The first is an optical channel monitor (OCM) with integrated input-selection switch in which a single large MEMS mirror tilts along one axis to measure the DWDM spectrum and tilts along the orthogonal axis to switch between two input ports. The powers of 100-GHz spaced channels are accurately measured with adjacent-channel power differences up to 10 dB without the use of deconvolution. The second is a spectral bandpass filter where the MEMS mirror tilts along one axis to tune the center wavelength over 38 nm, and tilts along the orthogonal axis to independently control the filter 3-dB passband width from 28 to 210 GHz. The resolution is sufficient to produce a flat-top demultiplexing filter for 50-GHz spaced channels with 30-dB adjacent-channel isolation. These filters could provide colorless and channel-plan-independent demultiplexing ports in broadcast-and-select architectures. The insertion loss is 4.6 dB and the PDL is 0.26 dB.

Citation Download Citation

Gordon Wilson "Spectrum steering: a new platform for wavelength filtering, switching, and monitoring", Proc. SPIE 6019, Passive Components and Fiber-based Devices II, 60190J (5 December 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.636251

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