Dispersion of double-slot microring resonators in optical buffer

Abstract

In the optical packet switching network, optical buffer is an important device. Microring resonator optical buffers provide good delay performance and flexibility in design. By cascading multiple microring resonators, higher delay-bandwidth product is obtained, but the requirements of high integration and low dispersion are hard to satisfy simultaneously. Double-slot waveguide was proposed to construct highly integrated racetrack microring resonators in this study. Based on dispersion analysis of the thickness of each layer of a waveguide, the structure of waveguide was optimized to reach flat and low dispersion. Average dispersions of straight and 3 μm bend waveguides were 5.1 ps/(nm•km) and 4.4 ps/(nm•km), respectively. Besides, the additional loss from coupling was greatly reduced when applying proper relative displacement between straight and bend waveguides. Theoretical and design basis provided in this paper will help to develop multi-microring optical buffers in the future.