VPIcomponentMaker™Photonic Circuits provides a focused modeling and simulation environment for experts in photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design. It provides advanced libraries for modeling PICs comprising a mixture of hundreds of photonic, optoelectronic and electrical elements. Circuit-level abstracted models facilitate rapid prototyping of complex large-scale structures independentlyfrom the dispersed technology process (InP, SOI, CMOS-Silicon).

The intelligent combination of time-and-frequency domain modeling (TFDM) enables fast and accurate simulations of heterogeneous PICs, consisting of active and passive sub-elements. This approach allows the efficient modeling of multiscale PICs covering subelements of different length scales (from few μm to cm on the same circuit).

The VPI Transmission-Line Model (TLM) handles the modeling of multisection semiconductor devices with bulk or MQW active mediums. This includes buried-hetero-structure lasers, amplifiers, electrooptic modulators, and distributed Bragg reflectors. The TLM accounts for Kerr and two-photon absorption effects, carrier and tuning dynamics, birefringence, polarization coupling, arbitrary gain and absorption spectra and dispersion.

The S-matrix approach sustains the modeling of passive photonic and linear electrical elements such as passive wave-guides, directional couplers, MMIs, star couplers, microring resonators, resistors, capacitors, inductors and voltage and current sources. This method provides support for frequency-dependent effective mode indices and attenuation.

Benefits

Design and evaluate novel photonic circuits, integrated transmitters and receivers, tunable lasers and electric circuits

Build upwards from fundamental photonic elements, up to complex large-scale PICs

Investigate device tolerances due to fabrication for a preliminary optimization of the device functionality

Characterize large signal dynamics, tuning behavior, noise characteristics, side-mode suppression and others

Model bidirectional signal and noise processes Find settings for stable laser operation, self-pulsation

and mode-locking operation

Design of Photonic Integrated Circuits

PhotonicCircuits

New Features Improved Capabilities

Photonic Design Automation

VPIphotonics Design Suite™ embeds expert knowledge in one shared, flexible software environment to support require-ments in design, analysis and optimization providing you with the most powerful numerical algorithms as a profes-sional solution for Photonic Design Automation (PDA). Beside VPIcomponentMaker™Photonic Circuits the suite includes:

VPItransmissionMaker™Optical Systems accelerates the design of new photonic and optoelectronic applications for short- range, access, metro and long-haul optical transmission systems. Further, it supports assessment of technology upgrade and component substitution strategies that are to be developed for existing network plants.

VPIcomponentMaker™Fiber Optics provides professional means for modeling, optimization and design of fiber-based optical devices such as doped-fiber, Raman and para-metric amplifiers, continuous-wave and pulsed optical fiber sources, optical signal processing for telecommunication, high-power and ultrafast applications.

VPIlabExpert™ provides great potential for reducing efforts in the lab by applying ready-to-use advanced functionalities and virtualizing lab equipment through emulation of optical and electrical components. It addresses the specific require-ments of experimentalists for data pre- & post-processing and signal analysis functions for optical communications.

Applications

• Design and optimize active and passive PICs• Model dynamically tunable passive components (optical

filter, optical delay line, phase shifter, interleaver)• Design microring-based photonic circuits (add-drop

filters, optical delay lines, ring modulators, polarization converters), with variable coupled rings

• Model waveguide Bragg gratings with individually specified index and loss coupling profiles (uniform, sampled, apodized and chirped)

• Design and optimize MMI-based components and visualization of MMI internal fields

• Build transmitters and receivers for advanced modulation formats (PSK, DPSK, DQPSK, mPSK, mQAM)

• Engineer large-scale PICs (reconfigurable cross-connects, add-drop multiplexed, optical interconnects)

• Model multisection semiconductor lasers with longitudinally dependent parameters (tapered or FBG-stabilized lasers) including MQW/Bulk, active/DFB/DBR/passive device sections and reflective interfaces

• Design widely tunable and multichannel lasers with sampled Bragg gratings, ring-resonator reflectors and AWGs

• Optimize gain-clamped and reconfigurable semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA, RSOA)

• Develop electroabsorption and electrooptical modulators, based on Franz-Keldysh, Stark, Pockels or Kerr effects

• Analyze active, passive, ring and hybrid mode-locked lasers to determine amplitude and timing stability of ultrafast sources

• Develop 2R and 3R regenerators and optimize their speed, transfer characteristics and induced chirp

• Investigate laser dynamics: spectrum evolution, dynamic and adiabatic chirp, spectral-hole burning (SHB), turn-on jitter, mode hopping, intensity noise and data patterning

• Find optimum mixes of gain, loss and index coupling for power, spectral stability and feedback insensitivity in high-power lasers

• Enhance modulation speed using MQW materials, gain coupling and optimized drive waveforms

• Quantify antireflection coating specifications by simulating the full interaction of laser and modulator

• Develop fast switches, optical logic, modulators, detectors, edge detectors and gain flatteners

• Compare wavelength conversion based on XPM, XGM and FWM for speed, noise and conversion range

• Extract laser parameters from simple laboratory measure-ments, explore design variations based on the real device

PhotonicCircuits

Semiconductor Lasers and Transmitters

Signal Processing Elements

Passive and Hybrid Circuits

Electric Circuits

DFB DFB-EAGain-Coupled

Complex Coupled DFB

DBR-FPTunable

Mode-Locked DBR-Passive-FP Tunable

RSOA

Four −Wave Mixing

Control

SOA Gate Detector

Out

Cross−Gain Modulation

Cross −Phase Modulation

MZ Modulator

Switch Non-Linear Ring

Filter Waveguide Crossing

90−Degree Hybrid

Grating

90° H

Arrayed Waveguide

EAM Equivalent CircuitLow-Pass Filter

Features

• Accurate analytical models for standard passive photonic devices

• Advanced models for design of multisection optoelectronic devices: DFB, DBR, SOA, EAM

• Wide range of specialized optical modulators, optical sources and photodetectors

• Comprehensive and extensible library of linear electrical devices

• Support frequency-dependent effective mode indices and attenuations for TE- and TM-like modes

• Arbitrary carrier-dependent gain and voltage-dependent absorption spectra

• Efficient modeling of large-scale and multiscale PICs

• Flexible multiple signal representation with uni- and bidirectional signal flow

• DC, AC, and transient analysis of linear electric circuits• Cosimulation interface for creating custom PIC

elements• Comprehensive tools for advanced signal processing• Interactive simulations, simulation scripting, data

import with automatic file format conversion• Cosimulation with Keysight Advanced Design System

(ADS) and standard programming languages (Python, Matlab, DLLs)

• Extensive set of documentation including more than 130 exemplary design templates and application demonstrations

Design Examples

Passive Photonic Integrated Circuits

Passive PICs may comprise many functional subelements, such as directional, MMI and star couplers, microrings, waveguides and branches in a single design. VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuitsincludes a family of passive PIC elements modeled in terms of the S-matrix approach and implements both, the frequency- and time-domain simulation modes. Accurate analytical models (coupled-mode theory, self-imaging MMI model, Fourier optics star coupler model) grant fast PIC design and optimization of design tolerances. Measured models allow to realistically model PICs with customized components. Flexible characterization of TE and TM guided modes allows the investigation of birefringence, polarization coupling and dispersion effects.

Widely Tunable Lasers

Multisection tunable lasers are used in WDM transmitters to perform wavelength routing and conversion or modulation. Desirable features include wide tuning range, spectral purity and rapid tuning dynamics. Besides, multisection lasers might present self-pulsations as a result of instabilities induced by coupling between saturable-absorption and high-gain regions. VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits offers unique time-domain models to investigate carrier dynamics and nonlinear effects such as spectral-hole burning, carrier heating, and four-wave mixing. It also supports the monitoring of temporal oscillations of the carrier density in MQW and SCH regions of different sections.

High-Speed Integrated Modulators

The exponential growth of global Internet traffic and network bandwidth of optical interconnects inside datacenters imposes new requirements on high-speed integrated optical modulators. VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits enables designing such modulators for arbitrarily complex modulation formats, employing different physical effects for signal modulation: electro-optical and electro-absorption, carrier injection and carrier depletion. It allows accounting for signal retardation in both, distributed optical wave-guides and traveling wave electrodes. In particular, the measured voltage-dependent electro-absorption spectra can be automatically fitted by multi-Lorentzian IIR digital filters for accurate time-domain simulations.

Optical Signal Processing

Higher transmission rates demand circuits that generate and process optical signals at low cost, preferably in the optical domain. Active photonic circuits meet this need by providing all-optical methods of generating, switching and processing information at very high data rates using gain saturation and fast nonlinearities. VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits was especially designed to model the dynamics of ultrafast photonic circuits made from interacting elements, bringing unique insight to their opera-tion. The original time-and-frequency-domain modeling (TFDM) approach supports the handling of large-scale PICs consisting of linear and nonlinear blocks, performing active and passive functions.

Voltage-Dependent Absorption Spectra of EAM

Photonic ICs Design Flow

1

Design Flow API

dll_hh

Design Toolkit(VPItool

Circuit DesignVPIcomponentMaker

Photonic Circuits

Foundry(FhG-HHI)

GDSII FileGDSII File dll_hhi

Design ToolkitVPItoolkit PDK HHI

Layout Design(OptoDesigner, IPKISS)

Design Toolkit(VPItoolkit PDK fabABC)

Design Toolkit

PDK-fabABC

Foundry(fabABC)

Device ModelingVPImodeDesigner

Circuits

Design Toolkit Device

NetlistSystem Spec’s

VPItransmissionMaker Optical Systems

Design Flow API

, IPKISS)

PDK <fab>

Benefits

Prototype integrated photonics and optoelectronics circuits with prerequisite functionality

Account for layout information (physical locations, orientations) of BBs in the circuit design

Utilize rich libraries of passive and active BBs which can be fabricated at the foundry

Analyze fabrication tolerances and yield performance, and compare technology alternatives

Build on adequate simulation models of BBs that are based on characterization data

Export the circuit to PhoeniX OptoDesigner or Luceda IPKISS for layout, packaging and GDSII mask generation

VPIphotonics offers customized library extensions to VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits providing circuit-level support of a Process Design Kit (PDK) for various integrated photonics technologies (Indium Phosphide, Silicon, Silicon Nitride, Polymer) provided for instance by Fraunhofer HHI, SMART Photonics and LioniX International.

These pluggable VPItoolkit PDK <fab> extensions allow the user to rapidly prototype application-specific photonic integrated circuits (ASPICs) with prerequisite functionality utilizing foundry-specific information without going deep into the details of device layout and fabrication process. The designer can choose photonic devices from a fixed list of standard building blocks (BBs) supported by the foundry.Each BB is represented with an adequate simulation model and only a few user-controllable parameters.

All the custom building blocks of such a design kit can be used alongside with a broad set of standard modules and instrumentation in VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits.

VPItoolkit PDK <fab> implements the novel layout-aware schematic-driven PIC design methodology [1] enabling circuit-level simulations to account for exact physical loca-tions and orientations of PDK BBs on the final layout and to connect sub-circuits having fixed locations by smart elastic optical connectors. This functionality is enabled by the seamless integration with layout design tools (e.g., Opto-Designer, IPKISS) allowing to combine graphical schematic capture and automated waveguide routing.

[1] PIC Magazine Issue 4 – “PIC Design: schematic or layout first? Both!”

Design Kits for Photonics

Examplary ASPIC design based on generic integration technology with HHI PDK building blocks combining a trans-mitter [1] and receiver for THz applications in a single chip.

[1] F.M. Soares, J. Kreissl, M. Theurer, E. Bitincka, T. Goebel, M. Moehrle, and N. Grote, “Transmitter PIC for THz Applications Based on Generic Integration Technology”, IPRM, May 19 - 23, 2013, Kobe, Japan.

Transmitter and Receiver PIC for THz applications

Circuit design of optical device with VPItoolkit PDK HHI

Export to PhoeniX OptoDesigner for mask layout design

Design Examples using PDK Libraries

Circuit setup in VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits and exported layout in PhoeniX OptoDesigner using PDK LioniX

Chip design based on [2] using LioniX PDK building blocks for the integrated optical waveguide technology TriPleX™ and exemplary simulation result: restored Sample after OCT.

[2] K. Worhoff, R.G. Heideman, A. Leinse and M. Hoekman, “TriPleX: a versatile dielectric photonic platform“, Adv. Opt. Techn. 4(2), 189–207 (2015).

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)

© Copyright VPIphotonics

VPIphotonics is a company of the SaM Solutions group.VPIphotonics reserves the right to change and update product specifications at any time. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Protected by U.S. Patents 7451069, 7233962 & 6771873.Document Part Number: TC0-DS02-14 18050

Training & Design Services

Training courses are conducted on site, or at VPIphotonics‘locations in the USA and Germany. A training manual and certificate of completion is awarded to all successful participants. Courses can be tailored to meet individual demands, ranging from beginners to advanced-level participants and addressing general or highly specialized applications.

Additionally, VPIphotonics offers customized modeling and design services in various fields of photonics and optical communications.

Please contact us and tell us about your design challenges and project requirements. Our experts will get back to you.

For more information

AmericasVPIphotonics, Inc.1 Edgewater Drive, Suite 108Norwood, MA 02062USA

Phone +1 781 7623901

EMEA & APACVPIphotonics GmbHCarnotstr. 610587 BerlinGermany

Phone +49 30 398 058 0

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