Optical interleaver/de-interleaver

[0005] This invention relates to generally to a multiplexing/demultiplexing circuit, and more particularly, to a circuit that is suitable for interleaving/de-interleaving channels in an optical system.

[0006] Using optical signals as a means of carrying channeled information at high speeds through an optical path such as an optical waveguide i.e. optical fibres, is preferable over other schemes such as those using microwave links, coaxial cables, and twisted copper wires, since in the former, propagation loss is lower, and optical systems are immune to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI), and have higher channel capacities. High-speed optical systems have signaling rates of several mega-bits per second to several tens of giga-bits per second.

[0007] Optical communication systems are nearly ubiquitous in communication networks. The expression herein “Optical communication system” relates to any system that uses optical signals at any wavelength to convey information between two points through any optical path. Optical communication systems are described for example, in Gower, Ed. Optical communication Systems, (Prentice Hall, New York) 1993, and by P. E. Green, Jr in “Fiber optic networks” (Prentice Hall New Jersey) 1993, which are incorporated herein by reference.

[0008] As communication capacity is further increased to transmit an ever-increasing amount of information on optical fibres, data transmission rates increase and available bandwidth becomes a scarce resource.

[0009] High speed data signals are plural signals that are formed by the aggregation (or multiplexing) of several data streams to share a transmission medium for transmitting data to a distant location. Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is commonly used in optical communications systems as means to more efficiently use available resources. In WDM each high-speed data channel transmits its information at a pre-allocated wavelength on a single optical waveguide. At a receiver end, channels of different wavelengths are generally separated by narrow band filters and then detected or used for further processing. In practice, the number of channels that can be carried by a single optical waveguide in a WDM system is limited by crosstalk, narrow operating bandwidth of optical amplifiers and/or optical fiber non-linearities. Moreover such systems require an accurate band selection, stable tunable lasers or filters, and spectral purity that increase the cost of WDM systems and add to their complexity. This invention relates to a method and system for filtering or separating closely spaced channels in a manner that would otherwise not be suitably filtered by conventional optical filters.

[0010] Currently, internationally agreed upon channel spacing for high-speed optical transmission systems, is 100 Ghz, equivalent to 0.8 nm, surpassing, for example 200 Ghz channel spacing equivalent to 1.6 nanometers between adjacent channels. Of course, as the separation in wavelength between adjacent channels decreases, the requirement for more precise demultiplexing circuitry capable of ultra-narrow-band filtering, absent crosstalk, increases. The use of conventional dichroic filters to separate channels spaced by 0.4 nm or less without crosstalk, is not practicable; such filters being difficult if not impossible to manufacture.

[0011] In a paper entitled Multifunction optical filter with a Michelson-Gires-Tumois interferometer for wavelength-division-multiplexed network system applications, by Benjamin B. Dingle and Masayuki Izutsu published 1998, by the Optical Society of America, a device hereafter termed the MGTI (Michelson-Gires-Tournois Interferometer) device provides some of the functionality provided by the instant invention. For example, the MGTI device as exemplified in FIG. 1aserves as a narrow band wavelength demultiplexor; this device relies on interfering a reflected E-field with an E-field reflected by a plane mirror 16. The etalon 10 used has a 99.9% reflective back reflector 12rand a front reflector 12fhaving a reflectivity of about 10%; hence an output signal from only the front reflector 12fis utilized. A beam splitting prism (BSP) 18 is disposed to receive an incident beam and to direct the incident beam to the etalon 10. The BSP 18 further receives light returning from the etalon and provides a portion of that light to the plane mirror 16 and a remaining portion to an output port. Although the MGTI device appears to perform its intended function, it appears to have certain limitations. For example, the MGTI device requires an optical circulator to extract the output signal adding to signals loss and increased cost of the device; and the requirement of a BSP which is known to have a significant polarization dependent loss. FIG. 10 shows a graph with a linear plot of the phase difference between the two reflected E-fields from the GT and from a mirror with an optical path difference.

[0012] A wavelength interferometer can be made using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer(MZI). Notwithstanding, the spectral response of the MZI is sinusoidal and consequently does not have a desired flat-top characteristic passband; hence, its spectral window for low crosstalk, is small.

[0013] A paper by K. Oda et al., entitled “A wide-band guided-wave periodic multi/demultiplexer with a ring resonator for optical FDM transmission systems, JLT, vol. 6, no. 6, pp 1016-1022, June 1988, discloses improving the spectral response of the MZI and a suitable step-like response can be obtained by adding an all-wave filter such as a ring resonator to one arm of the MZ as is shown in FIG. 1. However, it is generally difficult to implement a low-loss ring resonator in a system having a free-spectral range (FSR) of 100 GHz or 50 Ghz.

[0014] The instant invention obviates the problems associated with the bulk optics GT device described heretofore, and obviates a device requiring a ring resonator.

[0015] It is an object of this invention to provide embodiments of the invention, some of which are planar waveguide implementations for a wavelength interleaver based on an MZ interferometer.

[0016] It is a further object of the invention to provide an interleaver that uses an asymmetric MZ combined with a suitable resonator disposed on the shorter arm of the MZ. Advantageously, the use of a planar waveguide MZ interferometer allows the setting of a required length difference between two arms of the MZ, very accurately.

[0017] In accordance with the invention, there is provided, a first coupler having an input port and at least two output ports;

[0018] a second coupler having two input ports and two output ports, the at least two output ports of the first coupler being optically coupled with the two output ports of the second coupler;

[0019] an optical cavity having a partially reflective surface E at one end and a reflective surface at another end with a higher reflectivity E′, the optical cavity being optically coupled to one of the at least two output ports of the first coupler and at one of the two output ports of the second coupler.

[0020] In accordance with the invention there is further provided, an interleaver/de-interleaver circuit comprising:

[0021] a Mach-Zehnder interferometer having two optical branch paths between two 50/50 couplers, one of the two branch paths including an etalon within the path, such that light traversing said one branch path is coupled from one of the couplers to the other after resonating within the etalon, light traversing another of the two branch paths interfering with the light traversing the other branch path within one of the two couplers.

[0022] In accordance with the invention, there is still further provided, an interleaver/de-interleaver comprising:

[0023] a MZ-interferometer having an input/output port and two output/input ports;

[0024] a GT resonator optically coupled with the MZ-interferometer, the GT resonator for providing additional filtering and for lessening the sinusoidal shape of de-interleaved channels.

[0025] Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described in conjunction with the drawings in which:

[0026] FIG. 1ais a block diagram of an MGTI device;

[0027] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a prior art wide-band guided-wave periodic multi/demultiplexer with a ring resonator for optical FDM transmission systems;

[0028] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of a WDM interleaver/de-interleaver circuit based on a waveguide MZ-interferometer combined with a GT resonator in accordance with the invention.

[0029] FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a 3 dB MMI coupler illustrating diagramatically the functionality of the device;

[0030] FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of an alternative embodiment of a WDM interleaver/de-interleaver circuit based on a waveguide MZ-interferometer combined with a GT resonator in accordance with the invention similar to that shown in FIG. 2 however having a resonator made by employing two materials having different refractive indices in the waveguides;

[0031] FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of an alternative embodiment of a WDM interleaver/de-interleaver circuit based on a waveguide MZ-interferometer combined with a GT resonator in accordance with the invention wherein a micro-optic GT resonator is provided;

[0032] FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of an alternative embodiment of a WDM interleaver/de-interleaver circuit based on a waveguide MZ-interferometer combined with a GT resonator in accordance with the invention having a mirror added to the upper arm of the MZ to balance the polarization-dependent behavior of the device;

[0033] FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of the invention showing a folded version of the device of FIG. 6; a spacer is introduced into the upper mirror to account for length difference between the two arms;

[0034] FIG. 8 is a device similar to that of FIG. 7 wherien the two 50/50 couplers have been replaced with a 4×4 MMI coupler of length 3 L₉₀/2;

[0035] FIG. 9 is a graph of the optical fields of the MZ-resonator interferometer after the second 3 dB coupler.

[0036] FIG. 10 is a graph depicting the difference between the optical fields of the MZ-resonator interferometer after the second 3 dB coupler.

[0037] FIGS. 11aand 11bare graphs of spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals a_aout1and a_aout2at the outputs of the MZ-resonator interferometer;

[0038] FIGS. 12aand 12bare graphs of the spectal transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals a_aout1and a_aout2at the outputs of the MZ-resonator interferometer;

[0039] FIG. 13 is a schematic diagram of a WDM interleaver that can be designed to be either symmetric or asymmetric;

[0040] FIG. 14 is a graph of phase difference between the two optical fields of the interleaver 13 after the second 3 dB coupler;

[0041] FIG. 15 is a graph of transmission versus optical frequency showing the spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals at the output of the device of FIG. 13, wherein the device is designed to be symmetric;

[0042] FIG. 16 is a graph of phase difference versus optical frequency depicting the phase difference between the two optical field of the interleaver in FIG. 13 after the second 3 dB coupler, wherein the device is designed to be asymmetric;

[0043] FIG. 17 is a graph of transmission versus optical frequency depicting the spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals at the output of the device of FIG. 13, wherein the device is designed to be asymmetric;

[0044] FIG. 18ais an alternative embodiment of the invention wherein only one GT resonator is used; and,

[0045] FIG. 18bis a detailed view of a portion of the circuit shown in FIG. 18a.

[0046] The prior art circuit of FIG. 1 has an improved response over the use of a known asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer filter, which is sinusoidal in output response. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to implement a low loss ring resonator with 100 GHz or 50 GHz FSR. Another advantage of the MZ interferometer of FIG. 1 is that it obviates the use of circulator, required in a typical bulk optics Michelson interferometer combined with a GT device.

[0047] An embodiment of this invention is shown in FIG. 2 implemented using waveguide technology based on and MZ interferometer combined with a GT resonator. The length of the arms 18aand 18bin combination are of a different length than the arm 18c. A 4-port 3 dB coupler 20bis disposed between arms 18aand 18boptically connecting ports of two 3 dB couplers 20aand 20c. At an end of the 3 dB coupler 20bis GT resonator, which is formed by providing a mirror 24bat one end of two waveguides 22aand 22band by disposing a partially reflecting plate 24awithin a groove across the waveguides 22aand 22b. The mirror has a reflectivity E′ and the partially reflecting plate 24ahas a reflectivity E<E′. Preferably, the mirror 24bis 100% reflective. The couplers 20aand 20care both 3 dB couplers. FIG. 3 shows in more detail the functionality of an MMI 3 dB coupler such as 20bhaving a mirror at ports 2 and 3. It becomes clear after understanding the operation of the 3 dB coupler with a mirror that an optical circulator heretofore required in a Michelson GT resonating device, is not required. The input signal a₁launched into port 1 is divided equally between ports 2 and 3. When signals a₂and a₃are reflected back by the mirror, they are combined into port 4 of the coupler and not port 1. This is due to phase relations in the 3 dB coupler. In this manner the reflected signal from the mirror is separated from the input signal without use of an optical circulator.

[0048] The operation of the Mach-Zhender Gires Tournois (MZGT) circuit of FIGS. 2, 4, and 5 is similar. These devices are polarization interleavers. Only one of vertical or horizontal polarized light of wavelength λ1, λ2, . . . λN is launched into input port 1 of the coupler 20a. If only vertically or only horizontally polarized light is launched into the device at the output of the device wavelengths/channels are de-interleaved; channels corresponding to wavelengths λ2, λ4, λ6 . . . are directed to one output port of the coupler 20cand channels corresponding to wavelengths λ1, λ3, λ5 . . . are directed to the other output port of the coupler 20c.

[0049] If the input light is not horizontally or vertically polarized, the device will not function as a wavelength de-interleaver. Hence this device is useful in transmission schemes that rely on wavelength polarization interleaving. Although the circuit is shown for performing polarization interleaving, it can be used in an opposite direction to de-interleave channels as well. If light launched into the device is, for example polarized at 45 degrees, the output arms would both provide adjacent channels having λ1, λ2, λ3, λ4 . . . λN wherein adjacent channels corresponding to these wavelengths would be orthogonally polarized, wherein the outputs would have inverse polarizations on each port for same channels. FIG. 6 which will be described in more detail hereafter, compensates for this behaviour such that the device is no longer polarization dependent.

[0050] Referring now to FIG. 4, an alternative embodiment is shown wherein the resonator is formed by employing two materials having different refractive indices. Light is partially reflected at the boundary of the two materials due to Fresnel reflection. The difference between the refractive indices has to be relatively high to achieve the desired reflectivities. a waveguide 41ahaving a refractive index n1 is directly coupled to a waveguide 42ahaving a refractive index n2. Waveguides 41band 42bare disposed in parallel forming the GT resonator.

[0051] Another embodiment of the invention is shown in FIG. 5 which is a hybrid device where an MZ interferometer has been combined with a micro-optic GT resonator. The shorter arm 18aof the MZ is coupled to a beam collimator 52 such as a graded-index lens. The resonating cavity is formed of a partially reflecting spacer 54 having a reflectivity E separated by a mirror 56 having a reflectivity E′ by a spacer 58.

[0052] FIG. 6 illustrates another embodiment of the invention similar to that of FIG. 5 however a beam collimator 62 and a mirror 66 are disposed in the pair of upper arms 68aand 68b. The circuits of FIGS. 6-8 provide embodiments of the invention wherein the device functions as a polarization-independent wavelength interleaver by way of having the mirror 66 and beam collimator 62 disposed in the upper arm.

[0053] FIG. 7 is a folded version of the device shown in FIG. 6. An additional spacer 74 is disposed in the upper arm of the MZ to provide a required length difference between the two arms of the MZ.

[0054] FIG. 8 illustrates an embodiment similar to that of FIG. 7, wherein a 4×4 MMI coupler of length 3 L_π/2 replaces the two 50/50 couplers shown in FIG. 7.

[0055] FIG. 9 illustrates the spectral phases of the optical fields of the MZ-resonator interferometer after the second 3 dB coupler. The phase of the signal propagating within the longer arm of the MZ is a linear ramp; the other curve represents the phase response of the GT resonator.

[0056] FIG. 10 shows the phase difference between the two optical fields of the MZ-resonator interferometer after the second 3 dB coupler. The phase difference alternates between 0 and +π over consecutive wavelength channels equivalent to the FSR of the resonator.

[0057] FIG. 11ashows the spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals a_out1and a_out2, at the output ports of the MZ-resonator interferometer. FIG. 11billustrates an expanded view of −1 to 0 dB range shows the ripples in the response. The reflectivity R₁of the partially reflecting plate is 0.1.

[0058] FIG. 12ashows the spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals a_out1and a_out2, for a different value of the reflectivity of the partially reflecting plate. It is seen from FIGS. 11aand 12athat by increasing the reflectivity of the partially reflecting plate, R₁, the response roll-off becomes steeper and both the channels bandwidth and cross-talk window increase while the side lobe levels also increase. This is illustrated more clearly in Table 1. Similar values for a well-designed coupler interferometer interleaver are shown in Table 2 to make the comparison more understandable. It is evident that the MZ-resonator interferometer has a steeper roll-off and, consequently better performance than the coupler interferometer in terms of cross-talk.

[0059] In the various embodiments of the invention, the free spectral range (FSR) of the GT-resonator is given by

[0060] FSR_GT=c/(2d)

[0061] where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and d is the optical length of the resonator cavity. The free-spectral range of the spectral response of the above interleavers are given by

[0062] FSR_INTERLEAVER=c/(d)

[0063] Furthermore, the design of the aforementioned interleavers require that the optical length difference between the two arms of the MZ interferometer be exactly equal to the optical length, d, of the resonator cavity.

[0064] The GT resonator is placed on the shorter arm.

[0065] The interleavers described heretofore, in principle, all result in symmetric odd and even channels. Notwithstanding, the embodiment shown in FIG. 13 can be designed to provide either symmetric or asymmetric channels. In some instances, asymmetric interleaved channels are desired.

[0066] Referring now to FIG. 13, an interleaver is shown based on an MZ-interferometer combined with two GT resonators. The lengths of the cavities of the two GT resonators slightly differ from each other. The length difference between the two arms is approximately equal to the difference between the two lengths of the two cavities. The longer cavity is placed on the shorter arm. The free-spectral range of the spectral response of the interleaver is given by

[0067] FSR_INTERLEAVER=c/(d₁+d₂)

[0068] where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and d₁and d₂are the optical path lengths of the two GT resonator cavities. The choice of values of d₁and d₂determine whether the interleaver is symmetric or asymmetric. The length difference between the two arms of the MZ and the reflectivity R₁of the front fact of the GT resonator depend on the choice of values of d₁and d₂. The interleaver is symmetric if d₂−d₁=(p+¼)λ, where λ is the wavelength and p is an integer number. Then the reflectivity R₁=0.172 and the length difference between the two arms of the MZ is equal to (p+¼)λ. This relation is true if the input coupler is a standard 2×2 coupler. If the input coupler is a centre-fed 1×2 MMI coupler or a Y-junction coupler, then the length difference between the arms is equal to pλ. In the optimum case, p=0. The interleaver would be asymmetric for all other values of d₂−d₁.

[0069] An advantage of the device of FIG. 13 compared with the device of FIG. 6 is that it requires temperature stabilization only in the GT cavity, whereas the device of FIG. 6, similar to an MGTI device requires temperature stabilization both in the cavity and in the arms.

[0070] FIG. 14 illustrates the phase difference between the two optical fields travelling through the device after the second 3 dB coupler. The phase difference alternates between 0 and +λ. FIG. 15 shows the spectral transmissions of the two de-interleaved signals at the outputs of the device. FIGS. 14 and 15 correspond to an interleaver that has been designed to be symmetric. Equivalently, FIGS. 16 and 17 correspond to a device that has been designed to be asymmetric.

[0071] An alternative embodiment of the invention is shown in FIGS. 18aand 18b. In contrast to the embodiment shown in FIG. 13, this embodiment only requires a single GT resonator.

[0072] The locations of the four waveguides (or optical fibres) at the input of the beam collimator has to be chosen appropriately so that the two angled paths through the GT result in slightly different FSR's as required in the design. The first 3 dB coupler, preferably a 50/50 coupler has two output waveguides coupled directly to a single GT resonator consisting of a partially reflecting surface illustrated by a dotted line and having a mirror 156 at another end. Disposed between is a beam collimator 152 and a spacer 158.

[0073] Of course numerous other embodiments can be envisaged, without departing form the spirit and scope of the invention.

[0074] Furthermore, the monolithic waveguide devices described in accordance with this invention can be fabricated in such a way as to make them relatively temperature stable by permanently tuning the device. In any of these embodiments one of the arms, a_ror a_tcan be doped, for example with germanium and subsequently exposed to UV light, in order to vary the refractive index of a particular section of the doped arm. Alternatively, exposing one arm to light of a suitable intensity and duration can in some instances yield a required refractive index change to permanently tune the device. This is a convenient method of permanently adjusting the phase relationship between the two arms a_rand a_tthereby yielding very temperature tolerant devices.