Transmission characteristics of arrayed waveguide N/spl times/N wavelength multiplexer

To realize practical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems, a high-performance N/spl times/N wavelength multiplexer is introduced that is based on an arrayed-waveguide grating. Its transmission characteristics are theoretically derived and experimentally confirmed. A prototype is constructed using the previously proposed techniques that attain low insertion loss and polarization independent operation. It has 16 channels (N=16) with a spacing of 0.8 mn, or 100 GHz, in the 1.55-/spl mu/m band. Frequency relation between input and output ports, free spectral range, and passband width are determined. A demonstration of IM-DD pulse transmission shows that there is no degradation of bit error rate resulting from the finite passband width and crosstalk of the multiplexer. It is confirmed that the multiplexer can realize highly reliable N-channel WDM and WDM-based N/spl times/N interconnect optical networks.<
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