Performance Variability analysis of Multi-stage Mach-Zehnder based Photonic Integrated Delay Line

A multi-stage Mach-Zehnder based integrated continuously tunable optical delay line with a large tunability range, increasing transmission bandwidth and the significant delay bandwidth product has recently been proposed in our previous work. However, as photonic devices are larger compared to wavelength, a slight variation in device geometry (due to stochastic uncertainties) can have significant impact on phase, particularly for devices dependent on interferometers such as Mach-Zehnder. Stochastic uncertainties affect the functional parameter of the fabricated circuit, and it is important to predict the performance of devices. In this work, we first review the proposed multi-stage Mach-Zehnder based photonics integrated delay line and then we analyze the performance variability caused by stochastic uncertainty in the delay line. We have analyzed the most crucial functional parameters that are the transmission, the group delay, 3-dB bandwidth, linear group delay and bandwidth delay product around operating frequency in presence of stochastic uncertainties