Abstract
A novel adiabatic couplers (ACs) based broadband and fabrication-tolerant two-mode multiplexer (MUX) is designed using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Being different from the previously reported ACs-based scheme, the converted and multiplexed signals are on conventional modes, rather than supermodes. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulations. Over a wavelength range of 75 nm measured, the crosstalk is lower than −20 dB, and the insertion loss is ~1 dB. The eye diagram and bit error rate measurements validate the good performance of the proposed mode MUX. The investigation on fabrication tolerance indicates reasonable performance degradation for a large gap deviation from −30 to 30 nm and etching depth deviation from −50 to 50 nm.
Highlights
To satisfy the exponentially increasing data demand, photonic interconnections based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology have been proposed as a promising solution and attracted significant interests in the past few years
In our scheme, the S0 (S1) mode is further processed by a power splitter, through evenly splitting power into two single-mode waveguides
Thanks to the proposed mode converter, the mode MUX can be seamlessly connected with conventional multimode waveguide
Summary
To satisfy the exponentially increasing data demand, photonic interconnections based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology have been proposed as a promising solution and attracted significant interests in the past few years. A high-performance mode multiplexer/demultiplexer (MUX/DeMUX) with low crosstalk, broad bandwidth, low insertion loss and large fabrication tolerance is the key component for realizing MDM link. Many mode MUX schemes had been proposed using SOI platforms, including asymmetric directional couplers (ADCs)[3,4], multimode interference (MMI)[5,6], adiabatic couplers (ACs)[7,8,9] and asymmetric Y-junction[10,11]. The ADC-based devices require precise phase matching and are inherently sensitive to fabrication errors. The ACs-based devices benefit from broad bandwidth and large fabrication tolerance due to its operation principle of mode evolution. A designed mode converter consisting of a power splitter and a Y-junction can convert the even and odd supermodes into the corresponding conventional modes of a multimode bus waveguide. The fabrication tolerance is characterized, and results show a good fabrication tolerance on gap and etching depth
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