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Photonic Crystal Fiber 1x4 Power Splitters for Optical Networks

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Jyothi Digge Baban Uttamrao Rindhe

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 Photonic Crystal Fiber- based 1X4 Power Splitters
for Optical Network
Jyothi Digge 1, B.U.Rindhe2 S.K.Narayankhedkar 2
1
SGB Amravati University(Research Scholar)
jyothijayarajdigge@rediffmail.com
2
B.U.Rindhe
burindhe@gmail.com
2
Smt IndiraGandhi College of Engineering
skniitb@yahoo.com

Abstract—A new design of multicore Photonic crystal fibers

(PCFs) is proposed and investigated through Finite difference time
domain (FDTD) and Band Solve method. The design comprises of
four indentical cores surrounding the central core.The optical
power launched into the central core is equally divided into four
neighbouring core with 25% coupling ratio.These fibers are highly
dispersive in nature. The dispersion offered by these PCFs is -
3500ps/nm-km.Coupled mode theory is used to understand the
supermode patterns and coupling charecteristics.Through
numerical simulations performed at 1550nm,It is demonstrated that Fig.1.a&b Solid core PCF and c&d Hollow core PCF [1]
optical power can be divided equally in 1-mm long PCF unlike that
of the earlier design which requires 5.8-mm long PCF.The power 2. HISTORY
coupling characteristics obtained through coupled mode analysis is
in good agreement with those calculated from Band Solve method.
The original motivation for developing PCF was the creation
of a new kind of dielectric waveguide-One that guides light
Index Terms—Microstructured optical fibers, Photonic –crystal
fiber(PCF),Photonic Band gaps(PBG), MulticorePCF and Power by means of two dimensional (2D) PBG.In 1991,the idea
splitter. that the well known ―stop bands‖ in periodic structure could
be extended to prevent propagation in all the directions was
leading to attempts worldwide to fabricate three-dimensional
1. INTRODUCTION PBG materials. At that time, the received wisdom was that
the refractive –index difference needed to create a PBG in
Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs), consisting of a core two dimensions was large of the order 2.2:1.It was not
surrounded by a cladding were first proposed in widely recognized that the refractive index difference
1996[1].Light in the PCF is well confined in the longitudinal requirement for PBG formation in two dimensions are
direction in the core region. According to their light guiding greatly relaxed if, as in a fiber propagation is predominantly
mechanism, PCF can be divided into two different types. 1) along the third axis-the direction of invariance[1].
PCF, that guides light by total internal reflection (TIR) 2)
PCF ,where guidance is provided by the photonic band gap 3. FABRICATION TECHNIQUE
(PBG) effect . PCFs have perfectly periodic structure of air
holes in the cladding region. By having different air hole PCF structures are currently produced in many laboratories
diameters along the two orthogonal axis, the no worldwide using a variety of different techniques. One of
characteristics of PCFs, such as birefringence and dispersion The simplest techniques, ie stack and draw, is a shown in
can be controlled [2].PCFs, which guides the light by total Fig.2[1].
internal reflection has the solid core and the PCFs, which
guides the light by PBG has hollow core as shown in the
Fig.1.
Fig. 2.Preform stack containing (a) birefringent solid core (b)
seven-cell hollow core (c) solid isotropic core and (d) doped core.[1]

The most widely used technique is stacking of circular

capillaries (Fig.2).Typically, a meter- length capillaries with Fig.3.Attenuation spectrum of a low loss hollow core PCF
an outer diameter of ~ 1mm are drawn from a starting tube designed to operate in ―C:band‖[2].
of high –purity synthetic silica with a diameter of ~ 20mm.
the inner / outer diameter of the starting tube. Which 6.OPTICAL PROPERTIES
typically lies in the range from 0.3 up to beyond 0.9, largely
determines the d/ value in the drawn fiber. Where ―d‖ is The cladding of the photonic crystal fiber has number of air
the diameter of the air hole and  is the pitch, ie the distance holes .By controlling the size of the air holes the optical
between the two adjacent holes. The uniformity in diameter properties such as effective index, the number of modes and
and circularity of the capillaries must be controlled to at the dispersion can be controlled. The optical fiber which
least 1% of the diameter. They are stacked horizontally in a guides the light by PBG effect has a photonic band gap as
suitably shaped jig to form the desired crystalline shown in the Fig.4.
arrangement. The stack is bound with wire before being
inserted into a jacketing tube and the whole assembly is then
mounted in the preform feed unit for drawing down to fiber.
Judicious use of pressure and vacuum during the draw
allows some limited control over the final structure
parameter, for example the d/ value.

4.APPLICATIONS OF PCF

 It can be used as a transmission fiber.

 Active devices, such as PCF Laser and Amplifiers.
 Passive devices such as MUX/DEMUX,
Modulators, couplers and power splitters. Fig.4.Photonic Band Gap for TE &TM Polarized light.
 Intra fiber devices used for cutting and cleaving.
Enlarging the particular air hole or removal of a particular air hole
 Biomedical sensors and micro fluidics.
is considered as a defect. The operating wave length and the period
of the PCFs should be chosen in such a way that the normalised
frequency obtained should fall in the band gap region. The PCFs
5.LOSSES IN PCF supports TE and TM mode propagation. The mode guided by the
hollow core PCFs is shown in the Fig.5.
Bending losses: As compared to conventional single mode
fiber, the bending losses are less. Unless the fiber breaks
substantial amount of bending losses are not observed. This
is because of the small value of  between the edges of
PBG.[3-4].Other losses are
 Absorption and Rayleigh scattering losses.
 Confinement losses.
The attenuation spectrum of PCF is as shown in Fig.3.

Fig.5.Guided mode of hollow -core PCF.

 7.NON LINEAR EFFECTS OF PCF

Kerr related nonlinear effects are observed in PCF, which is

used in the supercontinuum generation. As shown in
d2 d3
Fig.6.When pico second to femto second pulses pass through 33
the nonlinear PCF, its spectrum is widened. This 33
phenomenon is known as supercontiniuum generation. It is
mainly used in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).

d4 d5
5
d1

Fig.7.Schematic view of Multicore PCF.

Fig.6.Supercontiniuum light generated in Endlessly single 9.ANALYSIS OF MULTI CORE PCF

mode (ESM )–PCF from picoseconds fiber laser[1]
Coupled mode theory is used for evaluating the field
 Parametric amplifiers and lasers are efficiently
at the four cores [5]. The central core and the outer
designed using PCF, because the group velocity
cores behave like two parallel waveguides and the
dispersion (GVD) can be easily flattened in PCF. high dispersion is from the coupling between the two
 Self Phase modulation in PCF is used to generate waveguides. Fig.8.shows the coupling effect between
correlated Photon pairs which are used in quantum the central core and the outer small cores.
communication.ex: Quantum Computers.
 Soliton propagation is possible using PCF
 Brillouin scattering can be converted into Raman Κh
scattering by where the power can be transferred to
the optical mode of the same order frequency
shifted from the pump frequency by the cut off 1 2
frequency. Used in stimulated mode this effect is Κ2
used to generate the combs of frequencies spaced
by 2GHz at 1550nm wavelength. Κ1
5 ΚV≈0
C Κ4
8.DESIGN OF MULTI CORE PCF
o Κ3
The multicore fiber design is shown in Fig.7.The fiber
design comprises of four identical cores, d2-d5 surrounding
3 u 4
the central core d1. The multicore PCF consists of
hexagonal ring of rods in air. The free space
wavelength is 1550nm.The width of the core is pl
2*sqrt(fill*cell volume/pi). There is a large central Fig.8. Coupling between the central core & the outer cores
core whose diameter is four times as that of the ed
neighbouring cores. The period is Λ=4 µm.The
material chosen for numerical simulation is Silica. Ki, represents the coupling between the central core
There are 4 cores surrounding the central core as
m h&Kv are the horizontal and vertical
& outer core.K
shown in Fig.2.In this case the power launched into the coupling between the outer cores, where Kv is
central core is equally divided into other neighbouring cores neglected.oThe mode coupling between the cores can
with 25% coupling ratio .The resent research has shown that be described by the set of equations given below.
compact design of 6-8 core PCFs are possible.These type of de
PCFs find great applications as power splitters.Hybrid
polarization is used for simulation.
th

eo

ry

is

us

ed
  j1a1   ja1k1  k h 
da1
(1)
dz

 j 2 a2   ja2 k 2  k h 
da2
(2)
dz

 j 3a3   ja3 k3  k h  (3)

da3
dz

 j 4 a4   ja4 k 4  k h  (4)
da4
dz
Fig.9. Variation of effective index with wavelength
Where ak (k=1,2,3,4,&5) are the amplitude of the
fundamental mode in core k and β is the propagation We also note that the proposed device offers high negative
constant. These outer cores behave like parallel dispersion of -3500ps/nm.km,as shown in Fig.10.This type
of PCFs can also be used as a true time delay line (TTD) and
waveguides and the high dispersion is due to the
Mux/Demux.
coupling between the central waveguide and the
outer waveguides.

By expanding the propagation constant “β” of the

modes. By using Taylors series [4] –[8]we get

d (   p ) 2 d 2 i
i ( )   ( p )  (   p ) i  (5)
d   2 d 2
p   p
where i = 1..5 represents the inner and the outer
waveguides respectively and ωp represents the phase
matched frequency. Fig.10.Variation of D with  for Multi core PCF

In this arrangement the dispersion reaches the maximum The high value of negative dispersion offered by multicore
value for phase matched wavelength  = p, given by PCFs can be exploited, to design True time delay line(TTD)
and MUX/DEMUX.
4
 dn1 dn2 2
DMax    (  ) (6) In Fig.11 ,we show the x component of electric field (E x) at
2c i d d the initial stage where the power is launched into the central
i 1 core, and the final stage where the power is equally divided
into outer cores is shown in Fig.12. It is observed that the
For unequal power distribution, the diameter of each core is unequal distribution of the power in the outer cores is
varied by 0.1 µm. possible , when the d/ ratio is varied by 0.1 as shown in
Fig.13.This type of PCfs can be incorporated in the
10.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION array section of arrayed waveguide grating (AWG)
Mux/Demux.
The change in the effective index with wavelength is
very rapid in case of multicore PCF based AWG.This
is shown in Fig.9.

Fig.11 Modal field distribution (x component ) at Z=0 at
1550nm
Fig.12. Modal field distribution (x component ) at Z=1mm
at1550nm.
Fig.13. Modal field distribution (x component ) at Z=1mm
at 1550nm showing unequal power distribution.
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11. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have presented the 1x4 power splitter based
on multicore PCFs. Coupled mode equations are derived to
show the power transfer to the neighbouring cores with 25%
coupling ratio. The proposed multicore PCF divides the
power equally into the neighbouring cores. The proposed
design is easy to fabricate as compared to the earlier
design[9].During fabrication process there may be a slight
shift in the location of the surrounding cores. This will result
in the different coupling coefficients. This is being taken
care off by slightly offsetting the position of the cores. This
resulted in 24.5% power distribution to the neighbouring
cores. The proposed PCF can be fabricated by following the
same guidelines for fabricating the regular PCF.
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