10-GHz-spaced 1010-channel tandem AWG filter consisting of one primary and ten secondary AWGs

A very large channel-count arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) filter with more than 1000 channels is described. It was achieved by cascading a 1-THz-spaced flat-top 1/spl times/10 AWG as a primary filter and ten 10-GHz-spaced 1/spl times/160 AWGs as secondary filters in a tandem configuration. We achieved good adjacent and accumulated channel crosstalk values ranging from -32 to -25 dB and from -24 and -18 dB, respectively.