Cascadability of arrayed-waveguide grating (de)multiplexers in transparent optical networks

Abstract

In this paper cascadability performance of an arrayed waveguide grating multiplexer (AWGM) is evaluated theoretically and experimentally in a loop testbed showing the influence of passband narrowing, if the AWGM is well aligned to the optical carrier frequency. At a certain value of frequency detuning of the (de)multiplexers passband, single-sideband amplitude-shift keying (ASK) transmission is obtained with better cascadability performance.