SYNGRAT, an electrooptically controlled tunable filter with a synthesized grating structure

A new design for a single-stage filter, called synthesized grating structure (SYNGRAT), is presented and investigated theoretically. It is shown that, even for weak electrooptical effects, the tuning range can be as high as 450 channels for a channel separation of 1 nm. The electrooptically synthesized grating structure gives full control of the filter characteristics in terms of channel separation, side-lobe suppression and coupling efficiency over a very large tuning range. Efficient side-lobe suppression can be used to reduce the crosstalk. This concept gives new freedom of functionality and flexibility.