Wavelength to time interval demodulation employing a tunable micro-ring

We present an analysis of a wavelength monitoring system that employs a thermally tuned micro-ring resonator. The demodulation method is based on a time interval between peaks measurement. In order to evaluate this concept, a numerical simulation was executed based on a simple tuning model of the micro-ring resonator filter. Peak wavelength detection precision was determined using the Monte Carlo method. We observed that precision is highly enhanced if the bandwidth of the micro-ring and optical sensor spectrum are small. An experiment using a tunable laser source was done to demonstrate the concept and extracted results agreed with the simulated system.