Abstract In this work, we propose a new filter design based on a ring resonator. This structure has 99% transmission ratio and high sensitivity to detect small refractive index variations of the order of 0.002. More specifically, the small size of this resonator gives the advantage to model a demultiplexer of size 463 µm2 based on four ports which operates in the conventional transmission band. Also, we show that our demultiplexer structure can reach more than 90% transmission ratio with an optical quality factor of about 3800, the spectral width is 0.72 nm and a crosstalk between −13.28 and −32.13. In our study, we emphasized the plane wave method to study the photonic band gap and FDTD to determine the transmission spectrum.