An adaptive wavelength tunable optical filter employing an angle-tuned interference filter and an intelligent digital controller

This paper describes an adaptive wavelength tunable optical filter, which is composed of an angle-tuned interference optical filter and an intelligent digital controller. The new angle-tuned interference filter consists of a dielectric interference optical filter and a piezoelectric angle-tuning mechanism. It achieves quick wavelength switching within 2.5 ms in a 30 nm tuning range and a sufficiently low crosstalk less than -30 dB. The intelligent digital controller has two functions: wavelength tracking and wavelength channel selection. Combining these technologies, we have developed a practical low-cost tunable filter suitable for a post-optical-amplifier filter in a high-sensitivity detection system and a channel selector in a WDM system that requires 10-100 ms channel selection time. With a wavelength tracking operation, we have confirmed -35 dBm high-sensitivity detection in 20 nm wavelength range in a 10 Gb/s system. We have also confirmed a wavelength channel selection operation within 18 ms in a three-channel wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) system whose channel spacing is 4.4 nm.