Advanced arrayed-waveguide gratings and integrated optical devices

摘要

Planar optics have become the leading technology for DWDM applications, due to its high performance and low manufacturing costs enabled by wafer scale processing. A powerful new design tool has been successfully applied to Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) design and fabrication, enabling rapid design information turns, mask and process error correction, and higher final device yields. We also present a new wideband AWG design that permits a low-ripple passband shape over a larger range of the DWDM spectrum. Combined with state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication techniques, these new designs and methodologies have enabled a new generation of high-performance, high-yield PLC-based Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Modules (ROADM's). Optical data from a representative sample of almost 200 ROADM modules is presented, showing a tight statistical distribution of wide passband, low ripple, low insertion loss, and low polarization dependent loss devices.