Ultra-compact optical 90° hybrid based on a wedge-shaped 2 × 4 MMI coupler and a 2 × 2 MMI coupler in silicon-on-insulator

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We propose an ultra-compact optical 90° hybrid with the smallest length of 107μm, consisting of a wedge-shaped 2 × 4 MMI coupler connected with a 2 × 2 MMI coupler using silicon nanowaveguide technology. Neither cascaded phase shifters nor waveguide crossings are attached to the proposed 90° hybrid in coherent receiving system. The proposed device is demonstrated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) with 220nm thick top-silicon layer and 2μm thick buried oxide layer. A high performance of the proposed 90° hybrid is exhibited experimentally with a high extinction ratio larger than 20dB, an excess loss mostly less than 0.5dB, a common mode rejection ratio better than -20dB and phase deviation within the range of 5° over C-band spectral range.