Silicon wavelength-selective partial-drop broadcast filter bank

Abstract

We propose an approach to a wavelength-selective 1×N port optical broadcast network demonstrating the approach in a 1×8 port parallel optical drop filter bank utilizing adiabatic micro-ring tunable filters. The micro-ring filters exhibit first-order 92.7±3.7 GHz full width at half-maximum bandwidths with a 36.2 nm free spectral range, low-drop power variation (0.11 dB), and aggregate excess loss of only 1.1 dB in all drop ports. Error-free operation at a 10 Gbit/s data rate is achieved for all eight drop ports with less than a 0.5 dB power penalty among the ports. This wavelength-selective parallel-drop approach serves as a building block for on-chip all-to-all communication networks.