Transient effects and cascadability of an MEMS-based dynamic-gain equalizing filter: a case study

We investigate the cascadability and transient effects of an micro-electromechanical-systems-based 64-channel blocker. We observe no transient effect due to the blocker. We limited our study to ten cascades and observe negligible optical power penalty with or without the 7-dB maximum allowable equalization for both nonreturn-to-zero and return-to-zero pulses.