Abstract

Wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission technique is important to fully exploit the potential for very wide bandwidth in future optical fiber communication. In a WDM system the key component in the receiver side is the wavelength demultiplexer. The recently fabricated integrated tunable detector,¹ as shown in Fig. 1, is such an ideal device. It has the advantages of electronic controllable filter bandwidth and wide filter tuning range. It has the potential to be applied to high-speed packet switch and cannot be replaced by any other filter techniques because of its fast tuning speed (around several nanoseconds). This device also has the special characteristics of allowing only one below threshold Fabry-Perot (FP) mode in its cavity, which makes the whole distributed- Bragg-reflector (DBR) tuning range available for applications. We report in this paper a detailed study of using this kind of device as a wavelength demultiplexer in a multichannel system. Because the operation of a WDM system with active filters is complex,² it is easy to lose feeling on different phenomena and information during the experiment. We have done the theoretical pre-study (which sometimes is more informative) of the system and the result is presented below.

© 1993 Optical Society of America