Box-like spectral response of arrayed waveguide grating multiplexers

In this paper, an efficient technique is proposed to flatten the spectral response of an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) multiplexer. By subtracting an increment from the core width of odd arrayed waveguides and by adding the same increment to that of even arrayed waveguides, a box-like spectral response can be obtained. Simulated result for a 17 × 17 polymer AWG shows that the box-like spectral response has a 3-dB bandwidth of 0.5 nm, the crosstalk is about or less than −30 dB for every output channel, and the spectral shift caused by the mode polarization is about 0.02 nm.