A novel planar waveguide wavelength demultiplexer design for integrated optical triplexer transceiver

Abstract

A novel wavelength demultiplexer design is proposed for the development of integrated optical triplexer transceiver in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) applications. Still taking the slab waveguide as the beam confining element along the vertical direction but following a different approach from the arrayed waveguide grating, we use planar lenses to convert the phase front and planar diffraction grating to split the collimated beams in different wavelengths. The planar lenses and grating are realized through the effective refractive index difference arising from the difference on the cladding layer thickness of the slab waveguide. In applications such as optical triplexer transceivers where relatively large wavelength spacing is required among signal channels over a broad wavelength range, this design seems more appealing on simulated performance and fabrication cost in comparison with various existing integrated structures. Preliminary simulation results have shown that this component, once integrated with laser diode and photodetectors, has the potential to reach the required specifications as the optical triplexer transceiver in optical network unit for FTTH applications.