Reconfigurable Hybrid Polarization/Wavelength (De)Multiplexer for 1.6-Tbps Fiber Communications

We present an integrated, reconfigurable, and hybrid (de)multiplexer for polarization-division multiplexing (PDM) and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical fiber communications, designed and fabricated on a silicon-oninsulator (SOI) platform. Our design integrates a polarizationsplitting grating coupler (PSGC), a tunable Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), and a dual-ring microring resonator (MRR) array to support arbitrary input polarizations and simultaneous channel (de)multiplexing. A fast polarization-locking process is experimentally demonstrated. The fabricated photonic chip supports 16 channels (8 wavelengths × 2 polarizations), with a fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 12 dB and channel non-uniformity below 3 dB. Crosstalk levels between polarization and adjacent wavelength channels are below –20.2 dB and –18.7 dB, respectively. High-speed communication experiments using 112 Gbps non-return-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) signals confirm the effectiveness of polarization descrambling and wavelength demultiplexing, achieving an aggregate data rate of 1.6 Tbps. With its compact footprint, reconfigurability, and large data capacity, this hybrid (de)multiplexer is a promising solution for scalable optical interconnects in future data centers and interchip communication systems.