High-performance arrayed waveguide grating

Bart Fondeur; Anca Sala; Sanjay Thekdi; Niranjan Gopinathan; David Nakamoto; Masoud Aghel; Bob Brainard; Anant Vaidyanathan

doi:10.1117/12.529644

14 June 2004 High-performance arrayed waveguide grating

Bart Fondeur, Anca Sala, Sanjay Thekdi, Niranjan Gopinathan, David Nakamoto, Masoud Aghel, Bob Brainard, Anant Vaidyanathan

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5356, Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits VI; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529644
Event: Integrated Optoelectronic Devices 2004, 2004, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Planar technology and design have evolved significantly in the past decade, both in terms of performance and yield, reducing the cost/performance advantage of thin-film filters (TFF) over Array-Waveguide Grating (AWG) devices. This evolution is primarily due to two reasons. One of the reasons for this is the adoption of the latest in semi-conductor fabrication techniques with respect to wafer scale, process equipment automation, and yield engineering. The other reason is the many advancements made in the Planar Light Circuit (PLC) design front which have resulted in lower optical insertion loss, reduced crosstalk, increased channel bandwidth, decreased channel spacing, and minimal chromatic dispersion. We demonstrate here how such state-of-the-art fabrication technology in combination with advanced PLC designs can be effectively used to engineer the filter shape (ripple, bandwidth, and flatness) and chromatic dispersion of AWG's to match or exceed that of their thin-film counterparts. Low passband ripple is critical for cascading multiple nodes in ring network architecture whereas minimal chromatic dispersion (CD) is desired in high rate data systems to avoid signal distortion. The AWG device presented here has a 1dB bandwidth that exceeds 80% of the channel spacing awhile exhibiting a high flatness (25dB/1dB ratio < 1.7), both of which are at least a 50% improvement over generic flat-top AWG designs available in the market and are equivalent in performance to TFF devices. At 100 GHz spacing, AWG's have intrinsic low-dispersion, but narrowing the spacing to 50GHz leads to a four fold increase in the CD. Here, we have successfully overcome this limitation and have been able to design and fabricate a 50GHz wide-band AWG with less than 1ps/nm chromatic dispersion, which exceeds TFF performance.

Citation Download Citation

Bart Fondeur, Anca Sala, Sanjay Thekdi, Niranjan Gopinathan, David Nakamoto, Masoud Aghel, Bob Brainard, and Anant Vaidyanathan "High-performance arrayed waveguide grating", Proc. SPIE 5356, Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits VI, (14 June 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529644

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
12 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Dispersion

Waveguides

Photonic integrated circuits

Thin films

Semiconducting wafers

Optical filters

Dense wavelength division multiplexing

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years