Broadband Arrayed Waveguide Grating Multiplexers on InP

Abstract

Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) is becoming a popular way to increase the optical throughput of fibers for short to medium haul networks at a reduced cost. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has defned the CWDM network to consist of eighteen channels with channel spacings of 20 nm starting at 1270 nm and ending at 1610 nm.Four and eight channel AWGs on InP, suitable for CWDM, were fabricated using a novel and versatile S-shape design. The standard horseshoe layout will not work on semiconductor for AWGs with a free spectral range (FSR) larger than 30 nm. The AWG design provides operation insensitive to thermal and polarization fluctuations, which is key for low cost operation and packaging. It will be shown thatrefractive index changes over the large operating wavelength band produced negligible effects in the transmission spectrum.Standard AWG design assumes refractive index is a constant over the operating wavelength band. As a result, the output waveguide separations are held constant on the second star coupler. As the channel number increases, secondary focal dispersion causedfrom a changing refractive index can have detrimental effects on performance. A new design method will be introduced which includes refractive index dispersion by allowing the output waveguide separations to vary. The new design is consistent with standard design but is applicable in materials with a linear index dispersion over an arbitrarily large wavelength band.Lastly, a method for increasing the transmission using multimode waveguides is discussed. Traditionally, single mode waveguides are required in order to prevent higher order waveguide modes creating ghost images in the output spectrum. Using bend loss and waveguide junction offsets, higher order modes can be filtered from the output,thereby eliminating ghost images and at the same time, increase transmission.