$16\times 100$ GHz Echelle Grating-Based Wavelength Multiplexer on Silicon-on-Insulator Platform

This letter reports on an Echelle grating demultiplexer for dense wavelength-division-multiplexing applications with 16 channels and 100 GHz channel spacing. The Echelle grating is designed and fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator platform with a silicon guiding layer of 300 nm. The measured insertion losses of the Echelle grating are lower than 2 dB for all channels and the crosstalk is below 15 dB. Error free transmission was obtained for all channels with negligible penalty.