Doug Anthon

External cavity diode lasers tuned with silicon MEMS

In summary, silicon deep reactive ion etched (DRIE) MEMS actuators have enabled a small form factor, tunable laser source ideal for many DWDM applications. The performance of the MEM-ECL meets telecommunications requirements for optical power, side mode suppression, polarization extinction ratio, relative intensity noise, and linewidth. Frequency accuracy of /spl plusmn/1.25 GHz is obtained with closed loop control of the MEMS actuator voltage. Substantial immunity from external temperature fluctuations and vibrations can be achieved through a combination of thermo-mechanical design and servo control.

Widely tunable, narrow optical bandpass Gaussian filter using a silicon microactuator

A Littrow diffraction grating Gaussian bandpass optical filter uses a silicon microactuator to tune over 40 nm with narrow bandwidth, 2 dB insertion loss, 0.2 dB PDL, /spl plusmn/20 ps/nm dispersion, fast tuning, and accurate wavelength control in a compact butterfly package.

Tunable MEMS devices for reconfigurable optical networks

Transmitters and receivers based on MEMS-tuned external cavity diode lasers and diffraction grating filters deployed in reconfigurable optical networks provide up to 6.4 THz tuning in 15 ms with /spl plusmn/1.25 GHz frequency accuracy and superior optical performance in compact packages.