Abstract

The acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) has many features, which makes it a good candidate for use as a wavelength routing switch within transparent wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. While there has been extensive evaluation of the AOTF relating to the characteristics of the filter function and acoustic interaction during multiwavelength switching performance,¹ the system leve1 repercussions of these characteristics have had only limited scrutiny. In this paper, we present favorable results from bit-error-rate (BER) measurements performed on a dilated 2 × 2 AOTF switch² consisting of four polarization-independent 2 X 2 devices.

© 1996 Optical Society of America