Design of all-fiber optical interleavers with a given specification on passband ripples

This paper presents a quantitative design approach to the design of all-fiber optical interleavers with a given specification on the passband/stopband ripples. In the proposed approach, an unflatness measure is introduced by using the maximally flat theory to evaluate the unflatness of the interleaver passband/stopband transmission spectrum. The explicit relation between the introduced unflatness measure and the conventional measure defined by the magnitude of passband/stopband ripples is also given. It is shown that the proposed approach can produce Fourier Filter Flattop ((FT)-T-3) interleavers with satisfied passband/stopband responses. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.