Sensitivity Analysis and Uncertainty Mitigation of Photonic Integrated Circuits

Abstract

Unavoidable statistical variations in fabrication processes can have a strong effect on the functionality of fabricated photonic circuits and on fabrication yield. It is hence essential to consider these uncertainties during design in order to predict and control the statistical behavior of the circuits. In this paper, we exploit elementary effect test and variance-based sensitivity analysis to investigate the behavior of a photonic circuit under fabrication uncertainties, with the aim to identify the most critical parameters affecting circuit performances. As an example, we perform the sensitivity analysis on the 3-dB bandwidth of two different filter designs considering random deviations of the waveguides width and couplers’ gap. The information obtained from the analysis is then used to isolate the most critical parameters of the circuits and to estimate and reduce the cost of postfabrication correction of the process variability.