Design, modeling and simulation of planar waveguide wavelength demultiplexers

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology through optical fibers is the main solution to the current explosive growth of communication. Distribution of the appealing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks also calls for low cost, high performance photonic devices such as triplexer tranceivers. Monolithic photonic integration is obviously the trend to achieve cost-effective optical devices. Planar waveguide optical (de)multiplexers (MUX/DMUX) are key devices to realize low-cost WDM systems through monolithic photonic integration. The goal of this thesis is to design, model and simulate planar wavelength DMUX for WDM communication systems and FTTH networks.; After the first chapter of introduction, Chapter 2 and 3 are devoted to numerical methods on optical wave propagation and optical modal analysis, respectively, which mainly include several newly developed methods that target improved efficiency and accuracy. These two chapters provide numerical preparations for the device simulation and design in the subsequent chapters.; Next, the conventional planar wavelength DMUX, namely, arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG) is studied in Chapter 4, including analytical formulations, numerical simulations and designs. This serves as a theoretical foundation and comparison basis for the development of new planar waveguide wavelength DMUX presented in Chapter 5. The novel planar DMUX design is composed of a series of waveguide lenses and waveguide blazed phase gratings. The analytical formulations are derived and intensive numerical simulations are performed to verify and investigate this new DMUX. The design results have demonstrated the possibility of new DMUX working as an alternative or complementary approach to AWG in WDM systems.; Then, these two types of planar waveguide wavelength DMUX studied in the previous two chapters are employed to design optical triplexers for FTTH application in Chapter 6. The novel DMUX-based triplexer design predicts good performance with more compact device size. Non-uniform bandwidth requirement as well as polarization effect have been considered.; Finally, Chapter 7 presents a deep-etched antireflective (AR) waveguide termination approach to potentially all integrated photonic devices including the planar waveguide DMUXs to suppress unwanted reflections. The space mapping (SM) optimization technique is employed for the first time in photonics area for AR terminator design to improve efficiency.