Fast tunable filter for high-speed optical packet switching

Increasing data rates and the burstiness of traffic sources has led naturally to increasing interest in multi-Gigabit/sec optical packet-switching. One approach to achieve ultrafast packet-switching is using high-speed piezoelectrically-driven fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter (FFP-TF) for WDM network. The requirement for fast tuning raises a whole new set of challenges, such as a ringing, thermostability, and mechanical inertia control. It was shown that a correlation between the mechanical resonance and optical response of the filter is important for the filter's speed optimization. These features together with the FFP-TF's high capacitance are being folded into building a special controller to substantially improve the shape of the driving signal and the response of the filter. The resultant controller enables tuning the high-speed FFP-TF three-orders-of-magnitude faster than that possible with standard commercial FFP-TFs. The fastest switching time achieved is 3 /spl mu/s. This achievement can help update Rainbow-2 Broadcast-and-Select High-Speed WDM All-Optical network.