The goal of this research is to introduce the design and simulation of a novel 2×2 SOI integrated photonic phased array
switch. Under-etched NEMS-operated slot waveguides are used as the active phase shifters offering the benefits of
compact size and low power consumption. The design of the NEMS-operated phase shifter has been validated by
numerical analysis and simulation. The finite difference mode three-dimensional full-vectorial solver of FIMMPROP is
used for the simulation. The designed NEMS-operated phase shift element is only 349 μm in length, exhibits an excess
loss of about 1.1 dB and provides a phase shift of 180°. Straight transition slot waveguide couplers with high efficiency
of about 96.7% have been designed to couple the NEMS-operated phase shifters to standard unslotted waveguides. The
2×2 MMI (multimode interference) couplers used in the switch element feature a compact size of 4μm × 61.2 μm, have
a small excess loss of about 0.155 dB and minimal imbalance of about -0.004 dB. The NEMS-operated phase shifters are
located on the sides of the switch with their outermost electrode bond pads. Optical interferogram response is utilized for
the testing of the designed phase shifters.
For the SOI-waveguide directional coupler (WDC), optical access loss (OAL) and polarization dependence (PD) are two
critical performance specifications which seriously affect the adoptability and deployment of a device, including optical
on-chip loss (OCL), polarization dependent loss (PDL) and extinction ratio of a 3dB-coupler based device. In this work,
using a commercial software tool - FIMMPROP, the performance of an SOI-WDC is simulated. Simulations find that the
curved waveguides for the turning sections of a 3dB WDC not only enlarge the footprint size, but also seriously
deteriorate the device performance. For instance, the two curved waveguide sections of a WDC induce an unpredictably
large change in the 3dB-coupling length, increase an OAL of 0.4-0.9dB, and seriously deteriorate the PD, and these
performance changes radically depend on rib size. After a corner-turning mirror (CTM) structure is introduced to a 3dB
SOI-WDC, the experiments show both the footprint length and 3dB-coupling length are unchanged, the OAL of the 3dB
coupler is only 0.5dB which is close to the simulation value. Therefore, for a 3dB-coupler based Mach-Zehnder
interference (MZI) structure, the OCL will be controlled to be <1.0dB in device design and will not depend on rib size.
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