Selectable-FSR 10-GHz Granularity WDM Superchannel Filter in a Reconfigurable Photonic Integrated Circuit

Abstract

We present a 10-GHz granularity reconfigurable WDM superchannel filter in a photonic integrated circuit. The filter uses a ring-resonator-assisted tapped-delay-line topology. An example configuration with two ring resonators and four tapped delay lines provides a spectral filter with a flat-top passband, a roll-off factor of 8%, a tunable central wavelength, and a selectable free spectral range, i.e., 2× or 4× the 3-dB passband bandwidth. The device was fabricated in a silicon nitride (Si <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> N <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> /SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) waveguide with a chip area of 0.36 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> and has a fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 5 dB. We experimentally demonstrate the filter for selecting a subchannel from a WDM superchannel comprising 10-GHz subchannels with 10% and zero guard bands. Owing to the infinite impulse responses of ring resonators, this filter requires a significantly smaller area and fewer tuning elements compared with designs based on only tapped-delay-line finite-impulse-response filters. This paper contributes to the creation of chip-scale all-optical WDM superchannel transceivers and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs).