A Very Compact, High Speed and Rugged Integrated-Optic Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter for Wavelength Div. Demultiplexing in Fiber Optic Communication

Brimrose proposes to research and develop, in this SBIR program, a prototype minature, polarization-insensitive, acousto-optically tuned filter. This filter will be capable of high speed, mechanical-free electronic tuning over a broad wavelength region with high resolution, sensitivity and repeatability. The filter will be realized by employing optical waveguides integrated into a LiNbO3 substrate. Wavelength filtering is accomplished by TE-TM mode conversion in these optical waveguides, which occurs during an anisotropic acousto-optic interaction. The fast wavelength tuning (<10us), with narrow passband (~1.5nm) over a wide bandwidth (0.8 - 1.6 um), is made possible by acoustic dynamic grating controlled by simply changing the acoustic frequency applied to the filter. The principal investigator of this program, Dr. D. Vaughan, was previously working with the LiNbO3 IOAOTF development group at British Telecom in the UK. He is now committed to the further development and application of these devices with Brimrose. In combining state of the art guide-wave technology, integrated optics and acousto-optics, this polarization-independent acousto-optic filter offers the advantages of light weight (<1 gram), small size (10x5x1mm), low power consumption (<100mW), high sensitivity, reliability, ruggedness and potentially low cost.