Patent ID: 7324199

Claim:
A system for detecting an optical spectrum of an input signal, comprising: a tunable optical filter comprising: a microresonator having an optical pathlength and supporting whispering gallery modes, the optical pathlength of the microresonator being modifiable such that supported whispering gallery mode resonance frequencies are tunable; a waveguide for receiving the input signal, the waveguide being evanescently coupled to the microresonator such that supported whispering gallery mode resonance frequencies are extracted from the waveguide and received into the microresonator while light at frequencies not resonant with the microresonator remain within the waveguide; and a tuning assembly for modifying the optical pathlength of the microresonator in response to receiving a tuning signal; a detector for receiving light from the waveguide and generating detector output signals indicative of the light received from the waveguide; and a processor outputting tuning signals for controlling the tuning assembly and receiving a plurality of detector output signals from the detector as the tunable optical filter is tuned across a plurality of states while the input signal interacts with tunable optical filter, the processor further running a non-linear deconvolution algorithm for calculating a spectrum of the input signal using a transfer function matrix which is indicative of resonant spectra of the tunable optical filter at predefined states.