Design of a polarization-insensitive arrayed waveguide grating demultiplexer based on silicon photonic wires

The polarization dependence of an arrayed waveguide grating demultiplexer based on Si photonic wires is analyzed. The height and width of the arrayed waveguides are optimized to make the channel spacing polarization insensitive. To make the central wavelength polarization insensitive, different diffraction orders are chosen for TE and TM polarizations, and the remaining polarization-dependent wavelength is compensated with a noncentral input. A detailed design procedure is presented and numerical simulation results are given.