Abstract
A new approach to birefringence compensation in arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG) is proposed. The star couplers are designed according to Rowland circle construction with an oblique incident/diffraction angle, similar to the case of an echelle grating. Such an AWG design is more general and flexible, and the conventional AWG becomes its special case when the grating angle is zero. By appropriately designing the star coupler shape, the birefringence of the arrayed waveguides can be compensated by that of the slab waveguides. The details of the design method and simulation results are presented.
Highlights
Polarization dependence is an important issue in planar waveguide based wavelengthmultiplexers for DWDM applications
Several approaches have been developed to compensate the PDλ, including the insertion of a half wave plate in the middle of the arrayed waveguides [1], non-birefringence waveguide design [2,3,4,5], different waveguides in a triangular shaped patch area of the arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) [6, 7], and the integration of a polarization compensator in the slab region [8]. All those techniques suffer from problems ranging from fabrication complexities to poor performance, or they are limited to specific structures and material systems
We present a new design method for eliminating the birefringence of AWGs
Summary
Polarization dependence is an important issue in planar waveguide based wavelength (de)multiplexers for DWDM applications. Several approaches have been developed to compensate the PDλ, including the insertion of a half wave plate in the middle of the arrayed waveguides [1], non-birefringence waveguide design [2,3,4,5], different waveguides in a triangular shaped patch area of the AWG [6, 7], and the integration of a polarization compensator in the slab region [8] All those techniques suffer from problems ranging from fabrication complexities to poor performance, or they are limited to specific structures and material systems. By utilizing the birefringence difference between the slab waveguides and the arrayed waveguides, a polarization insensitive AWG can be realized without requiring any additional fabrication step or two different channel waveguides
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