High Refractive Index Contrast Transmission Grating for Integrated Optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing

High dispersion at small area devices in an integrated optical WDM system is achieved by a high contrast of the refractive indices between titania and alumina based waveguides of a self-focusing transmission grating.

Introduction

Besides high speed lasers and detectors wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems are the key components to fit the ever growing need for high bandwidth on optical networks. Penalties from polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in 40 Gb/s systems are assumed to favour dense WDM with 25 GHz channel spacings in future network solutions.