Gate-free integrated-optic tunable filter for demultiplexing various capacity optical OFDM signals

Spectrally efficient optical communication with flexible capacity is required in the prospective adaptive photonic network. Optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of candidates to contribute to this type of photonic network. Here we report on a gate-free integrated-optic tunable filter that can demultiplex optical OFDM signals with various number and symbol rate sub-carrier channels. The filter consists of tunable couplers, an array of delay lines, and a slab star coupler-type optical Fourier transformation circuit. We can tune the number and/or the symbol rate of demultiplexed optical OFDM channels by selecting the delay lines with the tunable couplers. Optical timing gates were normally attached to the filter output ports with a view to extracting the effective time of the filtered channels. In this investigation, we removed the optical gates and substituted a high-speed photodetector for the gate with a view to achieving completely passive demultiplexing of the various capacity optical OFDM signals. Various channel symbol rate and channel number OFDM signals (5 × 10 to 20 Gsymbol/s and 3 × 20 Gsymbol/s) were successfully demultiplexed with this gate-free tunable filter. Our star coupler-type tunable OFDM filter without the gates was used to demultiplex various channel symbol rate optical OFDM signals for the first time.