Broad-band array multiplexers made with silica waveguides on silicon

Abstract

A new waveguide array multiplexer design is presented, which is particularly suitable for making broad-band low-order devices. Two channel multiplexers at 1.0-1.55 pm, 131-1.53 pm and 1.47-1.55 pm are demonstrated. Compared to conventional waveguide multiplexers, these devices have wide spectral ranges of low crosstalk. The devices are polarization independent. The crosstalk and fiber-to-fiber insertion loss for the 131-1.53 pm multiplexer were the lowest yet reported for array multiplexers: about -35 and -2 dB, respectively.

Broadband arrayed waveguide gratings on InP

“…Conventional horseshoe type AWG geometries will not work for broadband AWGs since they cannot produce a small path length difference L without creating a phased array consisting of intersecting or crossing waveguides. S-shape phased array geometries use an antisymmetric design which allows broadband AWGs with an arbitrarily small path length difference L (Adar et al 1993). S-shape AWGs have a phased array consisting of three sections which are shown in the schematic of Fig.…”

“…CWDM AWGs fabricated on other material systems include acrylate polymers and silica on silicon (Viens et al 2000;Adar et al 1993). Extremely low insertion loss and crosstalk have been demonstrated using these materials.…”

Frontiers in Planar Lightwave Circuit Technology

“…But, standard solutions may fail. For DWDM the Integrated Optics Design: Software Tools and Diversified Applications 269 typical banana AWG design 80 works well, but for CWDM other solutions 81 have to be used or found. The AWG is a typical example where design steps at a higher abstraction level are required as mentioned above.…”

Effect of Mask Discretization on Performance of Silicon Arrayed Waveguide Gratings

“…For instance, in silicon-on-insulator the high contrast waveguides allow sharp bends to reduce the device footprint but they are also extremely sensitive to phase errors, which reduces the margin of error of both the design and fabrication. On the other hand, lower contrast material platforms such as silica [2] and InP [3] are much more relaxed in terms of design and fabrication, but the devices become much larger which reduces the integration density. Other than phase errors, high contrast waveguides typically suffer from higher propagation losses.…”