Designing and simulating an AWG spectrometer on a SOI platform

An Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) is a wavelength-based dispersive device capable of combining or separating light signals at different wavelengths. The contribution of this publication is twofold. Firstly, we review the design procedure of an AWG for integrated spectrometry applications and simulate its transmission spectrum on a Silicon On Insulator (SOI) platform at a center wavelength of 1550 nm by means of an off-the-shelf BPM solver. Secondly, we present an in-house, user-friendly software tool for parametrically optimizing the device geometry and export it directly into ASCII format for lithographic fabrication.