All-optical tunable filter has attracted more and more attentions in the field of optical communication recently. The interests arose from the all-optical feature of the next generation optical networks. In such optical networks, all dynamicprocesses such as signal modulation, switching and routing will be implemented in all-optical manners to avoid the electro-optical bottleneck and in turn the fiber bandwidth is more sufficiently utilized. To support the dynamic processes in alloptical domain, optical tunable filter plays a key role and it has become one of the enabling technologies for the future dynamic all-optical networks. Therefore, various all-optical tunable filter technologies have been developed, among which all-fiber acousto-optic tunable filter (AF-AOTF) has scored the most promising all-optical tunable filter technology because of its attractive features such as small insertion loss, wide tuning range, fast tuning speed, simple electronic control mechanism and excellent compatibility with fiber-based networks.

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