Wavelength-Tunable Filters Utilizing Arrayed Waveguide Gratings for Colorless/Directionless/Contentionless Optical Signal Drop in ROADMs

The wavelength-tunable filter is a key device for creating colorless, directionless, and contentionless reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers. Although arrayed-waveguide gratings (AWGs) can realize compact and cost-effective tunable filters, crosstalk in wavelength-division-multiplexing systems increases as the frequency grid spacing decreases. To resolve this problem, we propose a tunable-filter architecture that can eliminate the crosstalk by utilizing two specific (commeasurable) cyclic AWGs in conjunction with multiple switches based on symmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers and an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (AMZI) filter. To verify the technical feasibility of the proposed architecture, we fabricate a monolithic prototype using planar-lightwave-circuit technology. We confirm, for the first time, its excellent performance by measuring insertion loss, polarization-dependent loss, and bit error ratios (BERs). Alternative tunable-filter configurations employing multiple AMZI-based filters are newly investigated for future applications.