Narrowband optical filter design for DWDM communication applications based on Generalized Aperiodic Thue-Morse structures

We present here a novel proposal for multichannel narrowband DWDM filter design, based on Generalized Aperiodic Thue-Morse (GATM) multilayer structures. Transmission spectra of light propagation through these structures are studied in this article. Numerical simulations in this research show an ultra high efficiency and a very low crosstalk for this filter so that the total transmission of filter output channels is up to 100% and the range of output wavelength is 1550 nm which is suitable for DWDM communication systems. By studying the effects of parameters of GATM structure, we realized that by varying parameters such as number of layers, distance between layers, refractive index of layers, etc., a suitable DWDM filter can be accomplished, which is in accordance with the communication ITU-T standard. This narrowband DWDM filter has capability of changing the number of channels and the bandwidth of each channel, at the special wavelength. By changing the thickness of each layer, the transmittance wavelength of the filter will change. The main advantage of the Thue-Morse structure is the numbers of selective layers, which in our designed structure, we choose GATM (3,2) where m = 3 and n = 2 in B(m)A(n), and for the first time we change both m and n simultaneously in the proposed structure to control optical properties of the introduced filter. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.