Time-dependent analysis of acousto-optic tunable filters for multichannel optical switching

A time-dependent analysis of acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTF's) for multiwavelength optical-switching operations is presented, it explains the reason for the observed nonlinear behavior such as passband-pulling and quantifies the associated crosstalk performance degradation. The degradation of the filter performance is found to be due to copresence of the acousto-optic interaction profiles for different channels. Along with extensive Poincare-sphere analysis, the model also reveals time-dependent fluctuation of switching spectral responses, which calls for attention to the worst instances in the fluctuation for the wavelength division multiplexer (WDM) optical-switch application.