Extraction of the optical properties of waveguides through the characterization of silicon-on-insulator integrated circuits

In the present work, a method to determine the optical waveguide properties of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) integrated circuits has been developed. According to the explicit relations between transfer functions of a microring resonator and the waveguide properties the inner optical parameters could be extracted. An increase in accuracy can be achieved by measuring the transfer functions of additional elements, such as a straight waveguide and a directional coupler. It is shown that the developed method allows one to determine the coupling coefficient, damping decrement, Bragg grating coupler efficiency, and waveguide dispersion with high accuracy. The obtained optical waveguide properties are used for modeling the transmission of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer which is used as a control element. The modeling results demonstrate a good agreement with the experimental characteristics. The developed method paves the way to local characterization of large-scale SOI integrated circuits by using the aforementioned structures as reference elements.