Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Optical technologies for a wide variety of applications appear to be approaching a critical point in development. The improvement of planar optical technologies utilizing integrated electronics fabrication techniques has lead to various initiatives in the development of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC). The combination of the physical complexity present in the operation of PIC and a wide range of applications require the creation of a CAD infrastructure comparable at least in effectiveness as developed for electronics. Additional complexity arises from coupled optical and thermal phenomena and the strong geometrical dependance of optical components. A wide range of possible applications from telecommunications and microwave photonics to sensors will require a powerful and flexible set of CAD tools.This grant will undertake to develop simulation techniques and practices to integrate and extend two of the applicants previously developed simulation tools. The first is a mixed domain circuit simulator (OptiSPICE) for use as a primary design tool for PIC created using photonic toolkits. Previous work has shown OptiSPICE to be a very appropriate tool for time-domain circuit level simulation of small to medium sized circuits. The second Atar is 3D thermal modeling and simulation framework. The applicant has also presented work demonstrating the use of powerful model reduction techniques for building small thermal models of optical devices that can be easily used in OptiSPICE. This previous work plus new initiatives on incorporating additional simulation methodologies, methods of creating flexible models for component libraries and layout/technology driven thermal models will enable the creation of powerful CAD tool for PIC design. A key point will be the need for a close connection between circuit layout, model creating and parameterization, thermal modeling and circuit design.