Optimal design of multichannel fiber Bragg grating filters using Pareto multi-objective optimization algorithm

•We propose a multi-objective optimization model for the multichannel FBG filter.•A evolutionary algorithm based NSGA-II and TOPSIS is proposed to solve the model.•The proposed approach can well handle the trade-off different design requirements.

A Pareto-based multi-objective optimization approach is proposed to design multichannel FBG filters. Instead of defining a single optimal objective, the proposed method establishes the multi-objective model by taking two design objectives into account, which are minimizing the maximum index modulation and minimizing the mean dispersion error. To address this optimization problem, we develop a two-stage evolutionary computation approach integrating an elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). NSGA-II is utilized to search for the candidate solutions in terms of both objectives. The obtained results are provided as Pareto front. Subsequently, the best compromise solution is determined by the TOPSIS method from the Pareto front according to the decision maker's preference. The design results show that the proposed approach yields a remarkable reduction of the maximum index modulation and the performance of dispersion spectra of the designed filter can be optimized simultaneously.