A design of a tunable hybrid Solc filter for 40-Gbps DWDM optical systems

In this paper, a contribution for enhancing the performance of a hybrid tunable Solc filter for 40-Gbps DWDM systems is presented. By using liquid crystal cells with variable birefringence, we have achieved a wavelength tuning of 33 ITU channels, for a 100-GHz frequency spacing, from 1564.69 to 1530.32 nm via a 10-stage hybrid Solc filter. The designed device presents a tuning step of 0.1 nm by applying a voltage difference of 0.2 V. The optical cancelling technique is used to make a 3-dB bandwidth tuning between 0.31 and 1.4 nm. The channel’s bandwidth is adjusted for different kinds of 40-Gbps modulated channels spectra. The 10-stage hybrid Solc filter provides theoretically an insertion loss of 4.6 dB, by using polarizers and birefringent plates characterized by high anti-reflection coatings, while its crosstalk approximates 14 dB. The proposed filter provides very low polarization-dependent loss through the incorporation of a polarization beam splitter and a polarization beam combiner.