Demonstration of a fast all-fiber acousto-optic tunable filter based variable optical attenuator

An all-fiber AOTF-based VOA with a compact size (/spl sim/3 cm), low insertion loss (<0.2 dB), fast response time (<15 /spl mu/s), broad bandwidth (FWHM bandwidth /spl sim/172 nm), and extinction ratio up to 12 dB is demonstrated on etched cladding single mode fiber. The device is a promising candidate for fast dynamic channel power management in fiber-optic networks.