Optical component for monitoring a multi wavelength connection and add drop multiplexer using this component, application to optical networks

摘要

The component includes an input optical fibre (68) which carries N different wavelength signals. A diffraction grating is a plane blazed grating (70), preferably in Littrow configuration. It is blazed in the first order and a set of fibres (72,74,76,78) recovers the signals corresponding to the first order diffraction. A set of control fibres (79,80,82,84) recovers the signal from a second or higher order diffraction. A first optical component may be used to separate the wavelengths and to extract one of the signals while a second component mixes the signals except that extracted which is replaced by another signal at that wavelength.