Open Access

In this paper, low-loss Y-branch splitters up to 128 splitting ratio are designed, simulated, and optimized by using 2D beam propagation method in OptiBPM tool by Optiwave. For an optical waveguide, a silica-on-silicon material platform is used. The splitters were designed as a planar structure for a telecommunication operating wavelength of 1.55 m. According to the minimum insertion loss and minimum non-uniformity, the optimum length for each Y-branch is determined. The influence of the pre-defined S-Bend waveguide shapes (Arc, Cosine, Sine) and of the waveguide core size reduction on the splitter performance has been also studied. The obtained simulation results of all designed splitters with different S-Bend shape waveguides together with the different waveguide core sizes are discussed and compared with each other.

Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) is a passive optical component, which have found applications in a wide range of photonic applications including telecommunications and medicine. Silica-on-Silicon (SoS) based AWGs use a low refractive-index contrast between the core (waveguide) and the cladding which leads to some significant advantages such as low propagation losses and low fiber coupling losses between the AWG waveguides and the fibres. Therefore, they are an attractive DWDM solution offering higher channel count technology and good performance characteristics compared to other methods. However, the very low refractive-index contrast means the bending radius of the waveguides needs to be very large (on the order of several millimeters) and may not fall below a particular critical value to suppress bending losses. As a result, silica-based waveguide devices usually have a very large size that limits the integration density of SiO2-based photonic integrated devices. High-index contrast AWGs (such as silicon, silicon nitride or polymer-based waveguide devices) feature much smaller waveguide size compared to low index contrast AWGs. Such compact devices can easily be implemented on a chip and have already found applications in emerging applications such as optical sensors, devices for DNA diagnostics and optical spectrometers for infrared spectroscopy.In this work, we present the design, simulation, technological verification and applications of both, the low-index contrast and high-index contrast AWGs. For telecommunication applications AWG-MUX/Demux with up to 128-channels will be presented. For medical applications the AWG-spectrometer with up to 512-channels will be presented.This work was carried out in the framework of the projects: ADOPT No. SK-AT-20-0012, NOVASiN No. SK-AT-20-0017 and AUTOPIC No. APVV-17-0662 from Slovak research and development agency of Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic and No. SK 07/2021 and SK 08/2021 from Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (OeAD-GmbH); and project PASTEL, no. 2020-10-15-001, funded by SAIA.

We present design, simulation and optimization of polymer based 16-channel, 100-GHz AWG designed for central wavelength of 1550 nm. The input design parameters were calculated applying AWG-Parameters tool. The simulations were performed applying a commercial photonic tool PHASAR from Optiwave. The achieved transmission characteristics were evaluated by AWG-Analyzer tool and show a satisfying agreement between designed and simulated AWG optical properties. Finally, the influence of the number of phased array (PA) waveguides on the AWG performance was studied. The results show that there is a certain minimum number of PA waveguides necessary to reach sufficient AWG performance.

This paper presents the design and optimization of 1x2N Y-branch optical splitters for telecom applications. A waveguide channel profile, used in the splitter design, is based on a standard silica-on-silicon material platform. Except for the lengths of the used Y-branches, design parameters such as port pitch between the waveguides and simulation parameters for all splitters were considered fixed. For every Y-branch splitter, insertion loss, non-uniformity, and background crosstalk are calculated. According to the minimum insertion loss and minimum non-uniformity, the optimum length for each Y-branch is determined. Finally, the individual Y-branches are cascade joined to design various Y-branch optical splitters, from 1x2 to 1x64.