Fig. 1: Concept of the proposed reconfigurable spectrometer.

a Schematic of passive RS designs based on channeled spectrum filters with passive channel splitting. Here, we use a disordered scattering medium as an example. The reduction in the spectrum amplitude results from the inherent power splitting losses. b Schematic of active RS designs with tunable spectral responses using lumped structures, which inevitably have a high cross-correlation between sampling channels. Here, a MEMS-enabled tunable RS is shown as an example. c Concept illustration of our proposed reconfigurable RS. A reconfigurable network based on switchable elements is used to actively route the incident signal via different optical paths without inducing any splitting loss. Broadband spectral filters are distributed after each switchable element to generate a highly uncorrelated spectral response for each channel