Optimizing the Design of a Silicon-Photonics Interleaver Circuit

In this work, the genetic algorithm is applied to optimize the design of a silicon-photonics based interleaver/deinterleaver circuit. The interleaver circuit is used to mix two data streams into one physical channel while the deinterleaver splits them into two different channels. The circuit satisfies the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) specifications, including a channel 3 dB-bandwidth of ±10 GHz around the maximum transmission, a channel free spectral range of 100 GHz, channel spacing of 50 GHz, crosstalk of −23 dB, and a maximum dispersion of 30 ps/nm. The circuit operates at the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. The genetic algorithm is employed to achieve the best coupling coefficients between the circuit components. The developed algorithm proves very efficient as it provides the design parameters required to achieve all of the WDM requirements in a very short time compared to the previously presented design approach, which relied on excessive numerical calculations besides investigating the circuit transmission in the Z domain.