Low-loss fibre-pigtailed 256 channel arrayed-waveguidegrating multiplexer using cascaded laterally-tapered waveguides

A fibre-pigtailed 25 GHz-spacing 256 channel arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) module has been fabricated. The module was composed of an AWG chip with a Δ of 1.5%, a fan-out planar lightwave circuit (PLC) with a Δ of 0.75%, an input fibre and two 128 fibre arrays. To improve the coupling loss of the 256 output fibres, a new PLC-fibre connection using cascaded laterally-tapered waveguides was developed. The fibre-pigtailing loss is reduced to only 1.1 dB and a multiplexer with a low insertion loss of 1.9–3.9 dB is realised.