Method and system for tunable optical filtering

Abstract

An optical device includes an optical splitter having an input port, a first output port and a second output port and is adapted to receive at said input port a WDM optical signal including a plurality of channels equally spaced by a frequency spacing and occupying an optical bandwidth, and wherein the optical splitter is adapted to output at the first and second output ports, respectively, a first and a second portion of the optical signal; an optical combiner having a respective first and second input ports and a respective output port; a first optical path optically connecting the first output port of the optical splitter to the first input port of the optical combiner; a second optical path optically connecting the second output port of the optical splitter to the second input port of the optical combiner, a first optical filter optically coupled along the first optical path, and a second optical filter optically coupled to the second optical path and the free spectral range of both the first and the second optical filter is equal to an odd multiple of the frequency spacing and greater than half of the optical bandwidth.