Tunable narrow band add-drop filter design based on apodized long period waveguide grating assisted co-directional coupler

• Published in: Optics express 2022-08, Vol.30 (16), p.28632-28646
• Main Authors: Saha, Nabarun, Brunetti, Giuseppe, Armenise, Mario Nicola, Ciminelli, Caterina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.461876

Tunable add/drop filter based optical interconnects are an integral part of data centers as well as optical communications. Although add/drop filters based on ring resonators and waveguide Bragg gratings are well developed, long period waveguide grating (LPWG) based add/drop filters have little been investigated so far. In this article, we propose an apodized LPWG assisted co-directional coupler for narrow band add/drop filtering by combining silicon (Si) waveguide with titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) waveguide geometry. The proposed structure has been analyzed by combining the finite element method (FEM) and transfer matrix method (TMM), showing a good side lobe suppression ratio (SLSR) equal to 25.7 dB and an insertion loss of 0.6 dB. Owing to the high group index difference of Si and TiO 2 waveguides, a narrow band response of 1.4 nm has been achieved with 800µm long LPWG. The opposite thermo-optic coefficients of Si and TiO 2 ensures a good thermal tunability of the central wavelength. Considering a thin metallic heater of titanium nitride (TiN) the thermal tuning efficiency is found to be 0.07 nm/mW. Further, two LPWGs have been cascaded to realize a tunable dual channel filter with a minimum channel spacing of 185 GHz and a channel crosstalk better than 20 dB, showing its potential application towards dense wavelength division multiplexing.