Low-loss and low-crosstalk 8 × 8 silicon nanowire AWG routers fabricated with CMOS technology.

Low-loss and low-crosstalk 8 × 8 arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) routers based on silicon nanowire waveguides are reported. A comparative study of the measurement results of the 3.2 nm-channel-spacing AWGs with three different designs is performed to evaluate the effect of each optimal technique, showing that a comprehensive optimization technique is more effective to improve the device performance than a single optimization. Based on the comprehensive optimal design, we further design and experimentally demonstrate a new 8-channel 0.8 nm-channel-spacing silicon AWG router for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) application with 130 nm CMOS technology. The AWG router with a channel spacing of 3.2 nm (resp. 0.8 nm) exhibits low insertion loss of 2.32 dB (resp. 2.92 dB) and low crosstalk of -20.5~-24.5 dB (resp. -16.9~-17.8 dB). In addition, sophisticated measurements are presented including all-input transmission testing and high-speed WDM system demonstrations for these routers. The functionality of the Si nanowire AWG as a router is characterized and a good cyclic rotation property is demonstrated. Moreover, we test the optical eye diagrams and bit-error-rates (BER) of the de-multiplexed signal when the multi-wavelength high-speed signals are launched into the AWG routers in a system experiment. Clear optical eye diagrams and low power penalty from the system point of view are achieved thanks to the low crosstalk of the AWG devices.

[1]  P. Dumon,et al.  Compact wavelength router based on a Silicon-on-insulator arrayed waveguide grating pigtailed to a fiber array. , 2006, Optics express.

[2]  Jing Wang,et al.  Optimization and Demonstration of a Large-bandwidth Carrier-depletion Silicon Optical Modulator , 2013, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[3]  P Waldron,et al.  A high-resolution silicon-on-insulator arrayed waveguide grating microspectrometer with sub-micrometer aperture waveguides. , 2007, Optics express.

[4]  D. Van Thourhout,et al.  Optimized Silicon AWG With Flattened Spectral Response Using an MMI Aperture , 2013, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[5]  Hiroshi Fukuda,et al.  Si-Ge-Silica Monolithic Integration Platform and Its Application to a 22-Gb/s $\times$ 16-ch WDM Receiver , 2013, IEEE Photonics Journal.

[6]  Katsunari Okamoto,et al.  Fabrication of silicon reflection-type arrayed-waveguide gratings with distributed Bragg reflectors. , 2013, Optics letters.

[7]  Geert Morthier,et al.  Athermal arrayed waveguide gratings in silicon-on-insulator by overlaying a polymer cladding on narrowed arrayed waveguides. , 2012, Applied optics.

[8]  Gyungock Kim,et al.  Crosstalk Reduction in a Shallow-Etched Silicon Nanowire AWG , 2008, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[9]  D. Van Thourhout,et al.  Silicon-on-Insulator Spectral Filters Fabricated With CMOS Technology , 2010, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[10]  Improve Channel Uniformity of an Si-Nanowire AWG Demultiplexer by Using Dual-Tapered Auxiliary Waveguides , 2007, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[11]  Jian-Jun He,et al.  Ultra-Compact Birefringence-Compensated Arrayed Waveguide Grating Triplexer Based on Silicon-On-Insulator , 2013, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[12]  C. Dragone,et al.  Broad band array multiplexers made with silica waveguides on silicon , 1992 .

[13]  D. Van Thourhout,et al.  Compact SOI-based polarization diversity wavelength de-multiplexer circuit using two symmetric AWGs , 2012, 2012 38th European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communications.

[14]  W. Bogaerts,et al.  Grating-Based Optical Fiber Interfaces for Silicon-on-Insulator Photonic Integrated Circuits , 2011, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[15]  Y. Inoue,et al.  Arrayed-waveguide grating multiplexer with loop-back optical paths and its applications , 1996 .

[16]  C. Dragone,et al.  Demonstration of a 15*15 arrayed waveguide multiplexer on InP , 1992, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[17]  F. Gan,et al.  Maximizing the Thermo-Optic Tuning Range of Silicon Photonic Structures , 2007, 2007 Photonics in Switching.

[18]  Akira Himeno,et al.  Integrated multichannel optical wavelength selective switches incorporating an arrayed-waveguide grating multiplexer and thermooptic switches , 1998 .

[19]  Mk Meint Smit,et al.  PHASAR-based WDM-devices: Principles, design and applications , 1996 .

[20]  Sailing He,et al.  Compact Arrayed Waveguide Grating Devices Based on Small SU-8 Strip Waveguides , 2011, Journal of Lightwave Technology.