Integrated optic front end for polarization diversity reception

An integrated optic circuit on silicon, which can be used in balanced polarization diversity detection, is demonstrated. The device consists of a 3 dB coupler and two polarization splitters. It has excess losses of 1.8 and 3.0 dB for TM and TE polarizations, respectively, and around −22 dB rejection of the unwanted polarizations at each output.