Miniaturization and bandwidth enhancement of Mach-Zehnder polarization splitter using non-uniform multimode interferometers

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shiraz, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

The design of a compact wideband polarization splitter based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with non-uniform multi-mode interferometer (MMI) couplers is presented in this manuscript. The polarization splitting in the proposed structure stems from polarization dependent dispersion of non-uniform silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides used as the MZI arms. The use of non-uniform MMI couplers increases the bandwidth of the structure while reduces its sensitivity to fabrication imperfections. Our simulation results show the very low insertion loss of 0.8dB, and high polarization extinction ratios of 10dB and 15dB for transverse magnetic and transverse electric field polarization, respectively, in the ultra-wide bandwidth of 100nm (1500nm-1600nm). The proposed polarization splitter has wider bandwidth and larger fabrication tolerance compared to the directional coupler based splitter. In addition total footprint is 3.86×60mm2 which is much smaller than MZI based splitters.

Keywords

References

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