Aarhus

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y

Arrayed Waveguide Gratings

Photonics Integrated Circuits
- Course ProjectQ2 2015/2016

Student:
Ionut-Adrian Hurmuz

Coordinator:
Martijn Heck

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction........................................................................................3
2. AWG Basic Design...............................................................................3
3. Components and Working Principle....................................................5
4. Important Properties and Parameters.................................................6
5. Applications AWG Wavelength Demultiplexers................................7
5.1 Fabrication Platforms Silica-on-Silicon...........................................7
5.2 Fabrication Platforms Indium Phosphide (InP)...............................8
5.3 Fabrication Platforms: Silicon...........................................................8
5.3 Application.......................................................................................9
5.4 Basic design and BPM simulation of an InP AWG demultiplexer....10
6. Conclusion........................................................................................13

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Arrayed Waveguide Gratings

1. Introduction
In the past two decades optical fiber communications has totally changed
the way world communicates and transports information. It is a
technological revolution that has fundamentally transformed the core of
telecommunications, its basic science, and its industry. At the same time
the complexity of optical systems is steadily increasing due to innovations
like wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) and the transition from
simple point-to point transmission to WDM networking.
Integrated optics was conceived in analogy to electronic integrated
circuits to handle increased systems complexity and to reduce the cost of
packaging and of subsystems. Its early successes included integrated
guided-wave wavelength filters and WDM multiplexers, WDM laser sources
such as distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers providing spectral control, and
chips integrating lasers with high-speed modulators.
WDM is the technology for achieving extremely high data rates over fiberoptic
cabling.
Also
known
as
Dense
Wavelength
Division
Multiplexing (DWDM), Wavelength Division Multiplexing is likely to replace
Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) as the standard transmission method for
high-speed fiber-optic backbones in the next few years.
In these systems, signals at different wavelengths are mixed and
transmitted through a single optical fiber, and this technology provides us
with a high per-fiber transmission capacity and low communication costs.
A wavelength multi/demultiplexer is a key device in such WDM systems.
Research on integrated optic (de)multiplexers has, since the early 1990s,
increasingly been focused on grating-based and phased-array (PHASAR)
based devices, also called arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG).
The AWG is a transmission grating that consists of multiple channel
waveguides of different lengths. These waveguides are fabricated on a
substrate by using planar lightwave circuit (PLC) technology that includes
glass film deposition, photolithography, and dry etching.
The features of AWG multi/demultiplexers are their compact size, stable
operation in the presence of mechanical vibration, high long-term
reliability, and mass production.

2. AWG Basic Design

An AWG functions similar to an optical prism, by imaging the input optical
field onto different spatial output locations based on the wavelength of the
incoming light. Figure 1.1 shows the waveguide layout of the AWG
multi/demultiplexer, which is the same as that of a conventional
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spectrometer. The concave alignment of the waveguide ends acts as a
lens and the AWG acts as a diffraction grating. Accordingly, lights with
different wavelengths are focused at corresponding ports when a
wavelength multiplexed light is launched into the input port.

Figure 1.1 AWG Layout

The diffraction angle and wavelength satisfy the following grating

equation:
(1)

Where:

nc: effective refractive index of channel waveguides in AWG

ns: effective refractive index of slab waveguide

d : grating pitch (distance between waveguide ends of AWG)
L: length difference between channel waveguides in AWG
m: diffraction order (natural number)
= 0 is a direction aiming at the center output waveguide.

The wavelength of the light that travels in this direction is called the
center wavelength. As the wavelength changes from the center
wavelength, the focal point moves at a speed of dx/d, which is called the
linear dispersion of the grating where x is a coordinate along the focal line
(Figure 1.1.). The linear dispersion is obtained as follows:

(2)

where

(3)

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and f is the focal length of the waveguide. In order to obtain a high
wavelength resolution, a large linear dispersion is needed. This is realized
with a long focal length f and a small pitch d.
In an AWG, an extremely large linear dispersion can be obtained, with a
high diffraction order m simply by designing the waveguide length. This is
the most important characteristic feature of the AWG and a wavelength
channel spacing of less than 1 nm is easily obtained in AWG
multi/demultiplexers.
This channel-spacing structure is called the free spectral range (FSR).
Therefore, the wavelength range available for WDM is limited to the FSR.
The FSR in terms of frequency is given by the formula below where c is the
light velocity in a vacuum.
(4)

where c is the light velocity in a vacuum. Using this description a

maximum number of channels (M) can be obtained:
(5)

It can also be seen that a large focal length f is required for a higher
channel count. Accordingly, a large number of arrayed waveguides is
required to receive all the diffracted light from the input waveguide.

3. Components and Working Principle

AWGs consist of three main functional elements: two star couplers and a
set of interconnecting arrayed waveguides, whose optical lengths, given
by the product of their effective indices (n g) and physical lengths, vary by
a constant m number of wavelengths of light at a central wavelength c
from one waveguide to another Equation (1).
The star couplers are generally based on the Rowland circle construction,
where the radius of curvature of the input and output waveguide planes is
one half of the radius of inner waveguide array planes. This arrangement
ensures that the output light is focused along the circular output interface
with the change in wavelength of the input signal.
In terms of device principle of operation, the light from the input
waveguide radiates into the first star coupler slab waveguide and excites
the modes of the arrayed waveguides at the star coupler output. After
traveling through the AW, the light from the waveguides is diffracted into
the output star slab waveguide, where it constructively converges in one
focal point at the output of the star coupler. This is accomplished because
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the path length difference between the arrayed waveguides results in a
relative phase delay in each waveguide, which changes with wavelength.
This results in a rotation of the field phase front in the second slab and a
translation of the location of the focal point as a function of the
wavelength.
A key for designing AWG components is given by Expression (2) which
relates the star coupler size, array waveguide spacing, and L.
Many important device physical features, such as the access and arrayed
waveguide widths and their minimum separation, will be dictated by the
maximum resolution of the device fabrication process. The arrayed
waveguide spacing, da, should be as low as possible, since any light not
coupled into the array will contribute to the device insertion losses. The
output waveguide spacing, dr , will directly impact the crosstalk of the
AWG, since the output image at a given spatial location will have
exponential tails that can couple into the adjacent output waveguides,
depending on the distance. The lower bound of this parameter can be
determined, based on the desired crosstalk and receiver waveguide

Figure 1.2 Crosstalk levels and Transmitted Power

architecture, using a normalized crosstalk plot like the one in Figure 1.2

4. Important Properties and Parameters

Focusing - obtained by choosing the length difference (L) between

adjacent arrayed waveguides equal to an integer number of
wavelengths, measured inside the array waveguides.
Dispersion refers to the dispersion angle () resulting from a phase
difference between adjacent waveguides.
FSR (free spectral range) - channel-spacing structure that limits the
wavelength range of the design.
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Bandwidth - If the wavelength is changed the focal field of the AWG

moves along the receiver waveguides. The frequency response of
the different channels follows from the overlap of this field with the
modal fields of the receiver waveguides.
Channel Crosstalk - may be caused by many mechanisms but in
most cases can be controlled by a proper design of the device; It
can be split into:
o Receiver Crosstalk caused by coupling between the
receivers through the exponential tails of the field
distributions overlapping fields
o Truncation - due to the finite width of the array aperture. This
causes power to be lost at the input aperture, and at the
output aperture the sidelobe level of the focal field will
increase.
o Mode Conversion appears if the array waveguides are not
strictly single moded and modes excited at the junctions
between straight and curved waveguides can propagate
coherently through the array and cause ghost images.
o Coupling in the Array: crosstalk can also be incurred by phase
distortion due to coupling in the input and output sections in
the arrays.
o Phase Transfer Incoherence: source of crosstalk that results
from incoherence of the phased array due to imperfections in
the fabrication process.
o Background Radiation due to light scattered out of the
waveguides at junctions or rough waveguide edges
Polarization Dependence - Phased arrays are polarization
independent if the array waveguides are polarization independent,
i.e., the propagation constants for the fundamental TE- and TMmode are equal. Waveguide birefringence, i.e., a difference in
propagation constants, will result in a shift of the spectral responses
with respect to each other, which is called the polarization
dispersion.

5. Applications AWG Wavelength Demultiplexers

Phased-array wavelength demultiplexers have become key components in
modern WDM systems. PHASARs can be fabricated in a single-mask planar
waveguide technology, which makes them robust and fabrication tolerant
and potentially low-cost. Their main potential lies in applications with
moderate crosstalk requirements and in integration in more complex
devices like multi-wavelength receivers and transmitters.

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5.1 Fabrication Platforms Silica-on-Silicon
Silica-on-silicon is the most promising set of materials for integrated
optics. It has the advantages of having a cheap fabrication process and a
good compatibility with Si-based microelectronics. The connection with
single mode optical fibers is also cheap and can be done with low losses.
It is good performing technology for passive devices like the ones based
on AWGs, but the research progress leads to active components such as
optical amplifiers. The only major disadvantage is the current lack of an
operating mechanism for high-speed switches (for example, an electrooptic effect).
As mentioned below, the passive components that can be fabricated using
this technology are currently leading the market. AWG Demultiplexers with
crosstalk figures that reach less than 30 dB are available for commercial
use and also with up to 80 channels and down to 25 GHz channel spacing.
Insertion losses are typically as low as 5 dB.
5.2 Fabrication Platforms Indium Phosphide (InP)
Lasers, photodiodes and waveguides fabricated on InP operate at the
optimum transmission window of glass fiber, which enable efficient fiber
communications. The direct band-gap structure makes it a good solution
for electro-optical devices. It has an extremely low noise figure and can
reach frequencies in the terahertz domain. The disadvantages are
represented by its fragility, low breakdown voltage and high costs - more
expensive than GaAs due to starting material costs and smaller wafer size
are used.
Silica-on-silicon technology is closer to maturity than Indium-Phosphide
(InP)-based semiconductor technology, but its applications are restricted
to passive and low-speed dynamic functions based on thermo-optic phase
shifters.
InP is better suited to more complex functions involving light generation,
amplification, detection and a range of non-linear signal operations. InP
can integrate all these functions on a single chip. Further, InP-based
devices are smaller by one or two orders than silica-based devices which
makes them very suitable for applications in complex integrated circuits.
Their performance is lagging behind silica-on-silicon devices, but it is
steadily improving. Due to their small waveguide core, coupling to fibers is
more difficult, and hence more costly. This makes them less competitive
for circuits with a restricted functionality. For more complex circuits, InP
will evolve and become a dominant material.

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5.3 Fabrication Platforms: Silicon
The use of silicon has long been established for infrared optics, such as
simple lenses and windows and long-wave detection. There is no doubt
about the economic and technical advantages of silicon and it was
inevitable that silicon would be employed wherever optic fiber is
deployed. In terms of optical spectrum advantages, Silicon has a wide
transparent window that extends to infrared. It also has a high heat
conductance and the benefit of low noise, which makes it suitable for high
speed integrated circuits.
Basic components with high performance have already been
demonstrated using silicon wire waveguides. A good example of a
standard commercial circuit is the AWG. Because of material purity and
precise geometric control, the silicon AWG has very low crosstalk and
excellent ITU grid registration as shown in figure 5.1. The absolute
insertion loss from glass fiber to a Si AWG is a little higher compared to a
silica AWG. However, when multiple functions are integrated
monolithically and fiber interconnects are not utilized, the Si AWG has an
insertion loss advantage.

Figure 5.1 Transmission spectrum of a silicon fat-band AWG

Some properties of the silicon waveguides are quite different from the
more familiar silica (SiO2) waveguide. In Silicon, the minimum turning
radius is 250 m compared to 5,000 um in Silica; the Si refractive index is
3.4 compared to Silicas 1.6;

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5.3 Application
A multiwavelength receiver is obtained by integration of an InP AWG
Demultiplexer with a photodiode array like it is presented in Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.1 1x8 WDM receiver consisting of an AWG integrated with 8 detector diodes

As described in the previous sections, the main advantage of InP-based

devices lies in their potential for monolithic integration of active
components, even though they exhibit higher propagation and fibercoupling losses. Monolithic integration of an InP based demultiplexer
allows a reduction in size, low-cost, and functionality for mass production
of more complex devices.

5.4 Basic design and BPM simulation of an InP AWG demultiplexer

In this section, a software simulation will be performed on a detailed
example of an AWG 1x8 Demultiplexer using the WDM PHASAR tool
offered by Optiwave. The basic idea behind these simulations is to break
the AWG into three separate components: an input star coupler, an array
of decoupled waveguides and an output star coupler. After that, numerical
solvers like Effective Index Calculator and Beam Propagation Method can
analyze and optimize the devices performance in terms of crosstalk level,
insertion loss, channel spacing, and bandwidth
The 1x8 arrayed waveguide gratingbased demultiplexer needs to be
designed in Indium Phosphide, to operate with the central wavelength of
1550 nm. The optical channels that need to be multiplexed are spaced by
100 GHz. The waveguide is a ridge structure which has a 600 nm InGaAsP
core, characterized by a refractive index n 1=3.4, in cladding of InP with
index n2 = 3.17. Arrayed waveguides are assumed to be 2 m wide and
input and output waveguides are 3 m wide. Figure 5.3 presents a picture
of the cross section (transverse plane) of the waveguide to be used in the
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phasar array. The thickness of the top and bottom layer is not important to
the calculation, as they are assumed to extend to infinity.
In the following step after designing the multilayer structure, the software
calculates the values of the effective indexes for both core and cladding.
This results are: 3.366345 for the core and 3.184621 for the cladding.
At this point waveguide design is complete and the simulation parameters
are required. A propagation length of 15000 m is selected over a mesh of
10000 m in width. By imposing a maximum crosstalk level specification

Figure 5.4 Key calculated parameters after imposing the requirements

Figure 5.3 InP cladding /InGaAsP core waveguide

of -35 dB the minimum waveguide separation is calculated at 3.3 microns

for the I/O waveguides and at 2.4 for the phased array. Still at this point a
number of 8 output channel is imposed and based on that and the
waveguide and wafer parameters, the Minimum Length of the Free
Propagation Region is calculated to be 325.9 microns. We can now select
the 100GHz channel spacing.
The key values of the design are displayed in Figure 5.4:
The grating design is complete (Figure 5.5) and the first simulation
performed is a check on the channel crosstalk level which is found to be at
the expected levels, below -100 dB.
The simulation of the device is computed using BPM, which is an
approximation technique for simulating the propagation of light in slowly
varying optical waveguiding structures.

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Figure 5.6 displays the result of BPM. The top left quadrant displays a
topographical view of the optical field and the top right quadrant shows a
3D representation of the same oprical field. The bottom left quadrant
displays a cross-sectional view of the effective index distribution (in red)
and the field distribution (in blue) while the bottom right quadrant displays

Figure 5.5 Grating Design

a 3D view of the effective index.

Figure 5.5 Simulation results

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The simulation is repeated using the wavelength as a scan parameter. 11

iterations are performed starting from 1.545 nm and going up to 1.555
nm. The figure below shows the Output Power (dB) for all eight channels
scanned.

Figure 5.7 Output Power vs Wavelength

6.

Conclusion
Arrayed waveguide gratings represent one of the most important building
blocks of complex photonic integrated circuits. They can be considered as
stand-alone passive components, but their utility as building blocks to
realize optical, chip-scale multiplexers/demultiplexers, cross-connectors
and router functions, as well as different digitally tunable diode laser
cavities make them a top research subject.
The highest complexities in optical integration so far have been reported
in AWG-based PICs. From the three fabrication methods presented the one
based on Indium Phosphide has an important growing potential and a
more complex spectrum of functions in terms of active components
design. It will lead to a dramatic reduction of the entry costs for
companies that are interested in applying this method to integrate
components. The big challenge that needs to be overcome is represented
by the scaling possibilities and in the future, it is expected to be very
competitive at small and medium production levels.

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Due to the nature of the production infrastructure the start-up costs are
lower compared to advanced silicon photonics processes, while offering
significantly more functionality. In the long term it is expected that InPPhotonics and CMOS electronics will merge in a heterogeneous integration
technology, where CMOS will provide the electronic functionality and InP
the photonic functionality.

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References
1. Photonic Integrated Circuits course materials, Aarhus University
1. Encyclopedic handbook of integrated optics / Kenuchi Iga and Yasuo
Kokaqbun, 2006
2. Diode lasers and photonic integrated circuits / Larry A. Coldren,
Scott Corzine, Milan Mashanovitch. 2nd ed.
3. Wavelength Filters in Fiber Optics, Herbert Venghaus, 2006
4. PHASAR-Based WDM-Devices: Principles, Design and Applications,
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS,
VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 1996
5. Arrayed Waveguide Grating, Dr. Martin Amersfoort, 1998
6. Introduction to fiber optics, Ajoy Ghatak, K. Thyagarajan, Cambridge
University Press
7. Arrayed Waveguide Gratings - Research Centre for Microtechnology,
Application note
8. Online resources

Wikipedia,

components

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YouTube

demonstrations

of