A Pedestal Waveguide Coupler for Mode Division Multiplexing

Abstract

In this work, we present a numerical design of a pedestal waveguide as a suitable alternative for coupling between few-mode fibers and integrated devices. The proposed waveguide has a cylindrical core deposited over a pedestal base. Numerical simulations are performed to show that modes propagating in pedestal waveguides possess an electric field profile similar to the LP modes in few-mode fibers. The power coupling between these two devices can reach values up to than 96% (-0.18 dB). Besides this, the pedestal waveguide has low insertion loss (IL) and the return loss is around 8 dB. This approach is a suitable alternative in the study of multimode integrated devices in order to work alongside few-mode fibers.