Photonics Research Group Home
Ghent University Journals/Proceedings
About People Research Publications Education Services
 IMEC
intern

 

Publication detail

Authors: W. Bogaerts, Y. Li, S. Pathak, A. Ruocco, M. Fiers, A. Ribeiro, E. Lambert, P. Dumon
Title: Integrated design for integrated photonics: from the physical to the circuit level and back
Format: International Conference Proceedings
Publication date: 5/2013
Journal/Conference/Book: Proc. SPIE 8781, Integrated Optics: Physics and Simulations (invited)
Editor/Publisher: SPIE, 
Volume(Issue): p.878102
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
DOI: 10.1117/12.2017761
Citations: 18 (Dimensions.ai - last update: 29/9/2024)
6 (OpenCitations - last update: 10/5/2024)
Look up on Google Scholar
Download: Download this Publication (2.2MB) (2.2MB)

Abstract

The rapid progress in silicon photonics has created a design gap for photonic integrated circuits: The high contrast of submicron silicon waveguides enables the integration of thousands of photonic components into one circuit, but this high contrast imposes extreme requirements on fabrication precision. Today’s photonic design tools have difficulty coping with both this complexity and these tolerances, while electronic design automation (EDA) tools support high complexity but cannot efficiently handle the semantics of photonics (wavelengths, phase, interference,…). In a photonic design flow, designers should take into account effects at the physical level, but at the same time propagate these effects up to the circuit simulation level to assess performance and yield. These different levels use usually treated in separate tools.
We have developed an integrated photonics design framework, called IPKISS, which enables parametric design from the physical level up to the circuit level, where the designer can define its photonic building blocks, execute physical simulations but also use the same components in a circuit simulator and generate the layouts for the fabrication mask. The links between the different simulation levels can be user-defined, or automatically generated (e.g. extracting a circuit S-matrix directly from a physical FDTD simulation). The components are parametric and technology aware, so designers can reuse building blocks over different design iterations or even between different fabrication foundries. Using our Ipkiss tool we have processed tens of masksets with thousands of silicon photonic IC designs for applications ranging from data-communications to sensors for biomedical test systems.

Related Research Topics

Citations (OpenCitations)

Back to publication list