A MEMS based variable optical attenuator

In this paper, a microelectromechanical variable optical attenuator (VOA) is described. The device is used to control the power in the all optical networks. Besides the advantage of low coupling loss, and the elimination of signal regeneration optoelectronics, it is compact, low cost and has good switching performance. In our laboratory, a shutter type VOA has been fabricated and setup for investigation. In this paper, the modeling and close loop control of the device are presented. Simulation and experimental results have shown that the proposed approaches improve the VOA performance.