Compact and Low-Loss Interleave Filter Employing Lattice-Form Structure and Silica-Based Waveguide

This paper describes a compact and practical interleave filter with uniform multi/demultiplexing properties and a wide operational wavelength range realized by using a lattice-form structure and a silica-based waveguide. In the design, we optimized the bandwidth by controlling the lattice stage number and the loss ripple in the spectrum. Moreover, we propose a novel coupler with a large fabrication tolerance, a new tandem configuration that provides uniform characteristics and low dispersion, a polarization dependence compensation method, and a folded configuration, which are effective in realizing a high-performance interleave filter. Based on the above techniques, we fabricated a 50-GHz channel spacing interleave filter by using planar-lightwave-circuit technologies and demonstrated that it performed well throughout the C-band, exhibiting a low insertion loss of about 2 dB, a low chromatic dispersion of within +/-20 ps/nm, a 1-dB passband width of over 34 GHz, and a 30-dB stopband width of over 25 GHz, which are sufficient for a 10-Gbps transmission system.