A 32-Channel C-Band Hybrid Wavelength/ Polarization Division (de)multiplexer on Silicon

A 32-channel hybrid (de)multiplexer on silicon is designed and experimentally demonstrated to enable polarization division multiplexing (PDM) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) for improving the capacity of optical communication links. The hybrid (de)multiplexer is realized by monolithically integrating a polarization rotator and splitter (PRS) and two 16-channel microring resonators (MRRs) arrays. The through and cross ports of the PRS are connected to the bus waveguide of the MRR arrays, respectively. In order to ensure a larger free spectrum range (FSR) to cover all wavelength channels, the radius of the microring is about 3
$\mu$
m and the wavelength-channel spacing is 1.6 nm. For the hybrid (de)multiplexer, the crosstalk between the adjacent channels and the non-adjacent channels are −20 dB and −25 dB, respectively. When TE
$_{0}$
mode input, the insertion loss is 1.5 dB–3.8 dB, the crosstalk between the through and cross port is less than −24 dB. When TM
$_{0}$
mode inputs, the insertion loss is 1.9 dB–4.5 dB and the polarization crosstalk is less than −22 dB. In order to eliminate the influence of the fabrication errors and temperature on resonance wavelength, a TiN thermal tuning electrode is added to calibrate the deviation of the wavelength.