The ultimate goal of the proposed Phase I work is to demonstrate the feasibility of miniaturized compact 1.55 mm acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTF), and to establish the technical foundation for the fabrication of the tunable filter. This proposed innovative approach will permit the development of compact tunable filters capable of advanced performance for commercial and military applications. This tunable filter could be met by a WDM International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard grid for channel spacing of 100 GHz, higher spectral resolution, a tuning range covering the entire EDFA, and a very fast response time. This filter also permits simultaneous and independent selection/routing of many wavelength channels, and is designed for multi-channel dense WDM filters/routers/switches or fast scans optical spectrum analyzers.Anticipated Benefits/Commercial Applications: This acousto-optic tunable filter will permit simultaneous and independent selection/routing of many wavelength channels, and is designed for multi-channel dense WDM filters/routers/switches or fast scans optical spectrum analyzers. The tunable filters can be applied to both circuit-switched networks, and to packet- and cell-switching networks.
