Temperature-insensitive and fabrication-tolerant coarse wavelength division (de)multiplexing on a silica platform using an angled multimode interferometer

Abstract

Wavelength division (de)multiplexing (WDM) device is a crucial component for optical transmission networks. In this paper, we demonstrate a 4 channel WDM device with a 20 nm wavelength spacing on silica based planar lightwave circuits (PLC) platform. The device is designed using an angled multimode interferometer (AMMI) structure. Since there are fewer bending waveguides than other WDMs, the device footprint is smaller, at 21 mm × 0.4 mm. Owing to the low thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) of silica, a low temperature sensitivity of 10 pm/°C is achieved. The fabricated device exhibits high performance of an insertion loss (IL) lower than 1.6 dB, a polarization dependent loss (PDL) lower than 0.34 dB, and the crosstalk between adjacent channels lower than −19 dB. The 3 dB bandwidth is 12.3∼13.5 nm. Moreover, the device shows a high tolerance with a sensitivity of central wavelength to the width of multimode interferometer < 43.75 pm/nm.

Low-Power-Consumption and Broadband 16-Channel Variable Optical Attenuator Array Based on Polymer/Silica Hybrid Waveguide

“…To achieve dynamic control and preserve power uniformities across all signal channels, a variable optical attenuator (VOA) array is always integrated with arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) [2] to conduct variable attenuator multiplexer/demultiplexer (VMUX/VDMUX), which is a crucial component of ROADM. Recently, significant progress has been made regarding VOA arrays based on different material platforms, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) [3][4][5], silicon nitride (SiN) [6,7] and silica-based planar lightwave circuits (PLCs) [8,9]. Benefiting from a large index difference between the core and cladding, silicon photonic (SiPh) with a compact footprint is suitable for large-scale integration.…”