Improved Waveguide Grating Router Suitable for Local Access in Optical Networks

An improved waveguide grating router suitable for local access and metropolitan applications is proposed. By using a bidirectional design, 16 channels widely spaced by 1250 GHz can be transmitted in each direction, with router loss close to 3 dB. The router can be used outdoors without temperature control and, because of the large channel spacing, the tolerances on the laser wavelengths are substantially reduced.