We report tunable optical devices based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), whose filtering characteristics are controlled by strain distributions. These devices include a widely wavelength tunable filter, a tunable group-velocity dispersion (GVD) compensator, a tunable dispersion slope (DS) compensator, and a variable-bandwidth optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM), which will play important roles for next-generation reconfigurable optical networks.

We have developed a polymer tunable wavelength filter using cross-linked silicone as a waveguide material for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems. The filter operated with a low insertion loss of 3.6-4.1 dB, a low crosstalk of < -30 dB, and a wide tuning range of 10 nm in the 20 to 80C temperature region without any changes in the spectral profile. We investigated the optical characteristics of the 32-ch WDM signals transmitted through the filter. We realized a stable filtering operation by introducing a feedback system. We also applied the filter to a WDM/SCM (subcarrier multiplexing) broadcast-and-select LAN system. We were able to realize a LAN system which operated at 6 Mbit/s and had 3200 channels by using 10-wavelength WDM signal. This suggests that our polymer tunable wavelength filter is suitable for practical use.