Noriaki ONODERA, Kenichiro TSUJI and Masatoshi SARUWATARI

Department of Communications Engineering, National Defense Academy, 1-10-20 Hashirimizu, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-8686, Japan

(Received May 17, 2005; Accepted July 25, 2005)

Ultrafast multi-wavelength routing by an active birefringent fiber loop filter/interleaver is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed active filter, the loop part consists of a birefringent optical fiber and a traveling-wave-type phase modulator. Numerical simulation using Jones matrix analysis shows that the periodic transmission/reflection bands of the filter can be switched by changing a phase difference between clockwise and counter clockwise components passing through the birefringent fiber loop. Experimentally, we realize fast switching by controlling the applied voltage to the phase modulator, and 8-GHz wavelength routing operation is achieved.

Key words: WDM, fiber loop filter, birefringent filter, interleaver, optical switching, Jones matrix