Proceedings Article | 16 November 2004
Proc. SPIE. 5579, Photonics North 2004: Photonic Applications in Telecommunications, Sensors, Software, and Lasers
KEYWORDS: Optical components, Waveguides, Polarization, Signal attenuation, Etching, Integrated optics, Photonic integrated circuits, Dense wavelength division multiplexing, Active optics, Wavelet packet decomposition
In WDM optical networks, signals have to be manipulated and monitored on a per wavelength basis. This requires that (de)multiplexing and wavelength processing functions are combined in the same optical component. The most efficient solution from a footprint size, cost and reliability point of view would be a combination of both functions in one photonic integrated circuit (PIC), fabricated by photolithography. Given that processing / detecting of individual wavelengths is an active function, in S, C and L communication bands naturally realized by InP and related semiconductor materials, InP-based PICs are widely agreed to be the superior choice.
This paper reports a practical design of such InP-based PICs. It is based on a building block approach, which allows a large variety of WDM optical components to be built from relatively few monolithically integrable elements, by using standard semiconductor fabrication technologies. These include: (i) (de)multiplexer based on a planar echelle diffractive grating with polarization compensation in the slab waveguide region; (ii) single-mode vertically integrated waveguide active devices with detecting, attenuating, amplifying and switching features, inserted in every (in)output waveguide channel of a planar (de)multiplexer, and (iii) passive waveguide circuitry required for coupling the light to and directing it through the InP-based photonic chip. Design and characterization examples of the building blocks and PICs for channel monitoring, variable attenuation / equalization and spatial switching are presented.
