Estimating Performance of Fiber Optic Modulators/Switches with Multimode Electrooptic Overlay/Interlay Waveguide

Abstract

We report here a simple and accurate semi-numerical approach to estimating the device characteristic parameters of in-line fiber optic modulators and switches based on evanescent field coupling between a side-polished single-mode fiber and a multi moded electrooptic waveguide as overlay/interlay. In this model the side polished fiber is replaced by an equivalent planar waveguide, thus reducing the basic device structure of our study to a 1-D multilayer, which can be investigated by using a matrix method and simple overlap integrals. Our model inherently takes into account the polarization sensitivity of such devices due to the birefringence of the electrooptic multimode waveguide. Our results are in close agreement with reported experiments on such devices with respect to important device characteristics.