Performance study of silica-on-silicon based multimode interference (MMI) optical coupler

Abstract

In recent years, the silica-on-silicon based multimode interference (MMI) optical waveguide is an interesting research topic. It is being advanced various researches on the silica based MMI coupler. This paper represents the considerations of the optimal design of the silica-on-silicon based MMI optical coupler for better performance. For that, we have illustrated the simulation results on a particular case of the 4×4 silica-on-silicon based MMI coupler. From the simulation results, it is seen that the performance of the MMI coupler depends on multiple width and length combinations of the MMI waveguide. The results also show that the width of the multimode waveguide could not be too small or too large for optimal performance, and at the widths, 100 μm, 120 μm and 130 μm, the performance could be optimized and be almost 0.62–0.64 in a given length range. Finally, the results have been compared with the optical coupler presently available in the market and show that the silica-on-silicon based MMI coupler is much more efficient in terms of losses and the performance associated with it and the size of the coupler.