Micromachined Drop and Continue ROADM on Silicon Optical Bench Platform

Abstract

We present a miniaturized ROADM implemented on a silicon optical bench platform; for application as drop and continue module in WDM networks. Both optical and opto‐mechanical components of the ROADM, including a silicon beam splitter, a tunable photonic band gap (PBG) filter with MEMS actuators and waveguides are simultaneously fabricated by micromachining of the device layer of a silicon‐on‐insulator wafer. The silicon beam splitter transmits 35% of the incoming WDM (S, C&L bands) signal to the PBG filter, which can be tuned over a range of more than 150nm (S, C&L). The 65% reflected power from the beam splitter containing all WDM channels can be routed to other nodes in the WDM ring.