Monolithically Integrated VOA-MUX with Power Monitors based on Submicron Silicon Photonics Platform

We present a monolithically integrated silicon-photonics 10-channel VOA-MUX (variable optical attenuators with multiplexing filters) with on-chip power monitors. The VOAMUX has a channel spacing of 100 GHz and fiber-to-fiber insertion losses of 9.1 to 9.7 dB. The submicron waveguides results in a compact chip size of 5 mm x 4 mm with a fast 3 dB switching response of 23 MHz. 1. Introduction Silicon photonics is gaining interest for a broad spectrum of applications, with a primary focus on optical interconnects and communications [1-4]. Submicron-size silicon waveguide structures are often employed in order to achieve low-power and high-speed photonic devices with compact sizes enabled by micron-size waveguide bending radii. Besides the significant potential of monolithic integration with complementary metal­oxide­ semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits, silicon photonics provides an ideal platform for constructing large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs). In this paper, we report a compact silicon PIC chip which integrates multichannel variable optical attenuator array and power monitors (PM) with a wavelength multiplexing filter (VMUX). The VMUX is one of the key components in reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) networks. Previously, single-chip or hybrid-chip VMUXs have been demonstrated based on silica planar light circuit (PLC) platforms [5-8], which usually suffer from large chip sizes (centimeter sizes), slow attenuation speeds (milliseconds), and high power consumption.