Patent attributes
Multi-wavelength light having a frequency band equal to or greater than the FSR of an AWG is demultiplexed into individual wavelength channels, and power level deviations between wavelength channels are suppressed. An optical demultiplexer includes a wavelength-group demultiplexer that demultiplexes multi-wavelength light into wavelength groups formed from wavelength channels, and channel demultiplexers that demultiplex each wavelength group into wavelength channels light. An optical multiplexer includes channel multiplexers that multiplex modulated signal light of each wavelength channel for each wavelength group, and a wavelength-group multiplexer that multiplexes, for each wavelength group, WDM signal light output from the channel multiplexers. The FSR of the wavelength-group multiplexer/demultiplexer is set to be equal to or greater than the frequency band of the multi-wavelength light. The channel multiplexer/demultiplexer is an AWG in which the FSR is approximately the full width at half maximum of the transmission characteristics of each port of the wavelength-group multiplexer/demultiplexer.
