Ultralow cross talk arrayed waveguide grating integrated with tunable microring filter array

The silicon-based arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) is widely used due to its compact footprint and its compatibility with the mature CMOS process. However, except for AWGs with ridged waveguides of a few micrometers of cross section, any small process error will cause a large phase deviation in other AWGs, resulting in an increasing cross talk. In this paper, an ultralow cross talk AWG via a tunable microring resonator (MRR) filter is demonstrated on the SOI platform. The measured insertion loss and minimum adjacent cross talk of the designed AWG are approximately 3.2 and -45.1 dB, respectively. Compared with conventional AWG, its cross talk is greatly reduced.