The Design of Optical Signal Transforms Based on Planar Waveguides on a Silicon on Insulator Platform

Abstract

This paper proposes new designs for optical signal processing elements based on solely on the combination of single mode waveguides and 2x2 multimode interference (MMI) couplers on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. For the first time, it is shown how optical Hadamard and Haar wavelet transforms may be implemented on an SOI platform using these passive planar devices. The designs for these devices are optimized using the three dimensional beam propagation method (3D BPM).