The goal of the proposed Phase I work is to demonstrate the feasibility of integrated 1.55 mm acousto-optic tunable filters (IAOTF), and to establish the technical foundation for the fabrication of the tunable filter. This device can be very small, rigid, and stable in the wide range of environment conditions. This proposed innovative approach will permit the development of integrated tunable filters capable of advanced performance for commercial and military applications. This tunable filter could be met to 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, and fast scans optical spectrum analyzers.
