Abstract

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems can meet the strong demand for high-ca pacity communication networks. A WDM channel selector, which can select an arbitrary channel from WDM channels, will be a key component in these networks. One type of WDM channel selector has already been developed with arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) multi/demultiplexers and semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) gates.^1–5 However, since the selector needs as many gates as WDM channels, integration diffi-culties become proportionally larger as the number of WDM channels increases. To solve this problem, we have proposed a novel configuration that reduces the number of gates considerably.⁶ The two key concepts involved are the use of the cyclic function of an AWG and two-step selection. We developed a monolithically integrated 64-channel WDM channel selector with only 16 SOA gates based on the configuration.⁶

© 2002 Optical Society of America