Transmission Analysis of Nanometric Plasmonic Filters for Implementation in Satellite Communications as a Demultiplexer

Operational limitations of a multi-channel nano-plasmonic demultiplexer is analyzed utilizing Drude model in finite-difference time-domain method software. The proposed filter is formed by a silver-air structure of an array of cavities acting as filters for specific modes travelling along a main metal–insulator-metal waveguide, by adding exports to the cavities it is possible to filter 1 or 2 channels per cavity. Even though fabrication restrictions and physical properties limit the transmission spectra and the number of cavities that can be placed consecutively in the structure, for the proposed wavelengths and materials it was found that the maximum number of filter cavities in the array is 8. The proposed plasmonic filter was demonstrated to efficiently filter 12 different wavelengths in the range 500–2100 nm which covers the optical band. This nano-plasmonic device could be utilized in satellite communications as it is a passive element and its reduced size for a demultiplexer makes it ideal to implement in satellite communications due to its energy saving capacity and reduced size.