Photonic Delay Lines Based on Silicon Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguide Structures

We propose a Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguide Structure based on silicon microring resonators. The proposed structure is designed on Silicon on Insulator platform so as to scale down the device dimensions as silicon on insulator platform provides the advantage of large index contrast, miniaturization of device dimensions. Tunability is incorporated on the structure in the simulation environment by placing thermal heaters on the top of the rings which change the refractive indices of the rings thereby changing the resonance wavelength. Finite difference time domain method is used to simulate the structure. Variable delays are achieved by tuning the necessary number of ring structures to their resonant wavelengths. This structure can be helpful in realizing optical delay lines for on chip optical interconnects.