Design considerations for connectors of integrated optical strip waveguides to single-mode fiber arrays

ABSTRACT This paper describes a new design consideration for connectors of integrated optical strip wave—guides tosingle-mode fiber arrays in silicon V-grooves and some formulas for determining position of fibers and dimen-sions of silicon V-grooves are derived. The relationship between the coupling efficiency and geometrical pa- rameters of fibers and waveguides in this way also are discussed. We can realize permanent connecting be-tweenfibers and waveguides, and simplify the coupling processes of the fibers and the waveguides and in- crease the coupling efficiency of SM fibers to waveguides. As an example , the coupling efficiency of SM fiber (D1Oim) to SM waveguide (1O.imX5im) is up to 55%. The coupling efficiency of SM waveguide to SMfiber is up to 86%. Key words : Optical fiber connector , integrated optics , optical waveguide , coupling efficiency. I INTRODUCTION Optoelectronic integrated waveguide devices are potentially important components for single-mode fibercommunication and signal processing systems. The permanent effective conneting for SM fibers to integratedoptical devices is one of the key technologies. The major difficulty is to keep the submicrorneter alignment tol-erances for single-mode devices. In this paper, we present a design for connecting single-mode fiber arrays toSM strip waveguides. According to geometrical sizes of fiber diameters and strip waveguides ,