A planar optical filter consisting of two stages performing stationary
imaging between an input waveguide and a set of output waveguides is
characterized by reduced crosstalk and minimal loss variation in each
passband. The input stage is a small waveguide grating router, connected
to the output stage by a waveguide lens essentially covering the entire
central zone of the input router. In one embodiment, the second stage
includes two waveguide grating routers and the lens has two separate
output apertures, respectively connected to these two routers. In this
arrangement, 2N input channels applied to the input port are separated by
the first grating into two interleaved sets of N channels each. The two
sets are respectively transferred by the composite waveguide lens to the
two output gratings which respectively separate the N channels of each
set. In another embodiment, the output router only includes one output
grating, and several stationary images are produced, at the same
waveguide location, by different orders of the output grating.