SOI-Based Multi-Channel AWG with Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing Interrogation System

For the development of minimized and high-rate photonic-integrated fiber Bragg grating interrogation (FBGI) systems, arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) has been widely used as one of the critical components. In this paper, we present an 8-channel SOI-based AWG for a photonic integrated FBG interrogation microsystem. The channel spacing of the AWG is designed to be 3 nm to meet a high-dynamic-range demodulation requirement. The core size of the fabricated AWG is about 335 x 335 mu m(2). The simulation results and experimental results are in high agreement, showing that AWG has a fine transmission spectrum with crosstalk below -16 dB, nonuniformity below 0.4 dB, insertion loss below -6.35 dB, 3 dB bandwidth about 1.3 nm and 10 dB bandwidth of 2.3 nm. The proposed AWG can be applied perfectly to the SOI-based AWG demodulation microsystem, exhibiting a large dynamic range of 1.2 nm, the resolution for measurements is 1.27 pm and a high accuracy of 20.6 pm.