Investigation of thermo-optic effect and multi-reflector tunable filter/multiplexer in SOI waveguides

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of thermo-optic phase shifters in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide structures. It gives recommendations to provide high tuning characteristics at minimum power requirements. Then, this analysis is applied to the description of a novel type of reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) utilizing multi-reflector (MR) beam expanders and thermo-optic tuning in SOI structures. It is intended for use in high dense wavelength-division-multiplexing (HDWDM) flexible fiber-optic networks having multi-hundreds wavelength channels and advanced ITU grids (12.5 GHz, 25 GHz, 50 GHz).