Planar-waveguide integrated spectral comparator

A cost-effective yet robust and versatile dual-channel spectral comparator is presented. The silica-on-silicon planar-waveguide integrated device includes two holographic Bragg-grating reflectors (HBRs) with complementary spectral transfer functions. Output comprises projections of input signal spectra onto the complementary spectral channels. Spectral comparators may be useful in optical code-division multiplexing, optical packet decoding, spectral target recognition, and the identification of molecular spectra. HBRs may be considered to be mode-specific photonic crystals.