Ultra-Compact Birefringence-Compensated Arrayed Waveguide Grating Triplexer Based on Silicon-On-Insulator

We demonstrate an ultra-compact birefringence-compensated arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) triplexer for application in optical network units (ONUs) based on silicon nanowire waveguides. The cross-order design is employed to cover three operating wavelengths of 1310, 1490 and 1550 nm for the triplexer. The large birefringence of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide is compensated by using angled star coupler design in combination with different diffraction orders for TE and TM modes. The device has a small footprint of only 0.18 x 0.12 mm(2). The excess loss for TM polarization for three channels is 3 similar to 4 dB and the crosstalk is better than -18 dB. The polarization dependent wavelength shift (PD lambda) is reduced from about 370 nm to less than 2.5 nm for wavelength channels at 1490-1550 nm.