An SOI-based 1550-nm 4×4 multimode interference coupler used for OADC

A novel integrable optical analog-to-digital converter (OADC) scheme based on phase-shifted optical quantization has been proposed for years, the quantization module of which is mainly composed of a 1×2 multi-mode interference (MMI) coupler, a phase modulator and a 4×4MMI. Although the manufacture technology of 1×2 MMI and phase modulator has been very mature, the 4×4MMI on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate with superior performance has not been realized. Since the 4×4MMI is crucial for the realization of the OADC, we designed and fabricated a 4×4 MMI coupler on SOI substrate. The width and length of the multi-mode section are 10.2 um and 182.6 um respectively. Measurement results show that the imbalance of the four output ports at 1550-nm is around 1.9 dB, while the insertion losses are 5.6 dB.