Advanced Tunable Optical Filter for Fiber Optic Communication Network

This report covers Phase II work for the development of dynamically reconfigurable WDM components based on the use of collinear beam acousto-optic tunable filters AOTF. These include optical add and drop multiplexers ODM, optical cross-connects OXC, and dynamic fiber amplifier equalizers DFAE. The project included three tasks A AOTF performance improvement new designs and fabrication techniques were investigated. A demonstration model 100 GHz channel spacing AOTF was constructed that achieved 0.5 nm FWHM, - 25 dB sidelobes, 3 dB optical insertion loss, 0.1 polarization-dependent loss, and 1 psec polarization mode dispersion. B Reconfigurable OADM and OXC implementation various space dilation architectures were examined. Using a 2x2 AOTF, crosstalk reduction was experimentally demonstrated below -26 dB. C DFAE development an AO-based system consisting of a multi-wave alternator, a WDM monitor and a multichannel electronic controller was constructed. Multiwavelength operation was demonstrated using a novel modulation decoding scheme. Results show that the use of AO-based dynamic WDM components is the most practical, low-cost approach compared to present divide and conquer approaches. As fiber amplifier bandwidth increases further. WDM network channel capacity could be greatly increased by exploiting the AOTFs extremely wide turning ranges.