Cover design:The illustration on the cover shows a "Hyper resonator", so named for its complex resonant nature. This circuit, given to me by Ronald Dekker as a brainteaser, sat idle on a post-it for nearly three years after it was first drawn. Since then it has become a taunting symbol of the complexity of seemingly simple circuits until, at the very end of four years of research, a simulation tool was finally created that could simulate this and many other circuits. However, not only this software was created but also several micro-resonator based devices of such complexity that they required packaging and the development of control electronics before being able to operate. As such the three inner circles in the "Hyper resonator" have also come to symbolize the three pillars that form the basis of this thesis is: simulation software, fabricated optical devices and their controlling hardware. Without the development of any one of these this thesis might have looked quite different… Copyright © 2007 Edwin Jan Klein, Enschede, The Netherlands.ISBN 978-90-365-2495-7
DENSELY INTEGRATED MICRORING-RESONATOR BASED COMPONENTS FOR FIBER-TO-THE-HOME APPLICATIONS
AbstractThis thesis describes the design, realization and characterization of densely integrated optical components based on thermally tunable microring resonators fabricated in Si 3 N 4 /SiO 2 .Chapter 1 "Introduction" In this chapter a brief introduction and overview are given of current broadband communication networks to provide a background for the work presented in this thesis. Current copper based networks are unable to meet future bandwidth demands and will therefore be slowly replaced with optical networks. A promising technology for these networks is WDM-PON. Currently, however, this technology is too expensive. The Broadband Photonics and NAIS projects within which the presented work was carried out both seek to lower the cost of WDM-PON implementations through dense integration of reconfigurable optical components based on optical microring resonators.Chapter 2 "The micro-resonator" In the second chapter the operating principle of a microring resonator is explained and the basic parameters that govern its operation are introduced. The filter frequencydomain responses for single as well as serial higher order systems based on two resonators are derived. Solutions for typical problems that occur when designing resonators such as a Free Spectral Range (FSR) that is too small or a filter shape that does not meet the desired specifications are also given.
Chapter 3 "Design"In the third chapter the design of microring resonator based devices is discussed in general terms. Several performance parameters are introduced that can be used to translate the requirements of a certain application into specific values of the basic microring resonator parameters. For microring resonators with a radius of 50 µm (FSR≈4.2 nm) , which is the case for most of the devices presented in this thesis, it is shown that for telecom applications a good target for the field cou...