DESIGN OF A SILICON PHOTONIC 3-DB THREE-MODE POWER SPLITTER

Silicon photonics has emerged as a crucial technology, driven by advance- ments in optical communications, particularly for data center communication transcei- vers. The rapid growth in silicon photonics is fueled by breakthroughs and increased invest- ment. Leveraging the unique properties of silicon, such as high refractive index contrast and compatibility with Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS), a variety of passive and active photonic devices have been developed, facilitating high-bandwidth da- ta transmission. Building upon the capabilities of silicon photonics, this paper proposes a design for a 3-dB power splitter capable of accommodating three modes simultaneous- ly. The proposed structure is designed on a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) material platform with a silicon layer thickness of 220 nm, following the standards of VLSI chip fabrication technology. The entire geometric structure is optimized, and its optical performance is evaluated using the 3D-BPM numerical simulation method. Simulation results demon- strate that the proposed structure operates effectively over a wide spectral range of 70 nm (from 1520 nm to 1590 nm). The overall integrated footprint of the structure is compact. These advantages in optical performance hold promise for the integration of large-scale photonic circuits, as well as in wideband Mode Division Multiplexing (MDM) technology applications.