Miniature, Tunable, Wide-Band-Pass Optical Filters

A proposed miniature, electrically tunable, band-pass optical filter would have a Fabry-Perot configuration, but would be designed to trade the high spectral resolution (narrow-band pass) and small tuning range of a traditional Fabry-Perot filter for low spectral resolution (wide-band pass) and a wide tuning range. Filters like this are candidates to supplant two other types of optical filters used in remote-sensing spectrometers: namely, acousto-optical tunable filters (which are heavy and power-hungry) and liquid-crystal tunable filters (which exhibit low efficiency and work only in narrow temperature ranges).