INTERCONNECT: Coming February 2012

A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design environment for the analysis of integrated optical circuits, silicon photonics components and optical interconnects

INTERCONNECT is an opto-electronic and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design software package that allows for the design, simulation and analysis of integrated circuits, silicon photonics, and optical interconnects containing such devices as Mach Zehnder modulators, coupled ring-resonators and arrayed waveguide gratings.

INTERCONNECT Beta Download

To enquire about the availability of becoming a beta tester for INTERCONNECT, please email Dr. Jackson Klein at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The interactive graphical environment includes a schematic editor that decomposes the functionality of complex optoelectronic circuits into a set of elements that represent the building blocks of the circuit.

A library of PIC elements and hierarchical circuit definition allows the user to quickly define and incorporate sub-circuits into complicated systems composed of multiple elements, without having to perform extremely large physical level simulations

Interoperability allows PIC elements modeled via Lumerical’s electromagnetic simulator products to be easily incorporated into INTERCONNECT projects.

INTERCONNECT includes both time and frequency domain simulators. Time domain simulation is performed using a data flow system simulator, allowing for more flexibility than using traditional discrete time or time-driven simulators. The simulator scheduler calculates each element in order to generate time domain waveform samples and propagate them bidirectionally. Very close coupling between components can be simulated allowing, for example, the analysis of optical resonators. Frequency domain simulation is performed using scattering data analysis to calculate the overall circuit response. It is done by solving a sparse matrix that represents the circuit as connected scattering matrices, each one of them representing the frequency response of an individual element.

Sophisticated analysis and visualization tools allow for the analysis of circuits behavior, including amplitude, phase, group delay and dispersion.

Topics:
Key Benefits
Features
Featured Applications
Supported Operating Systems

Key Benefits of INTERCONNECT

Model multi-element photonic integrated circuits too large to address with other simulation methodologies
Choose between conducting a time- or frequency-domain analysis based on the requirements of the particular design challenge being addressed
Quickly prototype photonic integrated circuit concepts with the idealized PIC elements available in INTERCONNECT
Incorporate sophisticated PIC element descriptions by incorporating highly-accurate physical designs from Lumerical’s electromagnetic simulator products MODE Solutions and FDTD Solutions

INTERCONNECT Features

Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) Schematic Editor

INTERCONNECT supports vectorial drawing of individual photonic integrated circuit elements and schematic views, including element symbols and connections
Back annotation feature incorporates simulation data in schematic editor
Tree view of the entire collection of data that defines the project allows the designer to easily navigate photonic circuits containing many elements

Hierarchical Photonic Circuit Definition and Design Parameterization

INTERCONNECT supports hierarchical definition of Compound Elements
Compound Elements can be used to create increasingly complex photonic integrated circuits based on sub-circuit elements
Unrestricted number of layers of hierarchy enable arbitrary levels of photonic integrated circuit complexity
INTERCONNECT also supports design parameterization to facilitate parameter sweeps and design optimization design tasks

Photonic Integrated Circuit Element Library

INTERCONNECT includes an extensive list of pre-defined PIC elements, including optical sources, measurement elements, and both passive and active optoelectronic devices
Custom PIC elements can be defined with analytic or imported s-parameter representations via Lumerical’s script language or MATLAB
PIC element categories include: waveguides, sources, detectors, transmitters, receivers, modulators, filters, mathematical elements, signal processing elements and others

Optimization and Parameter Sweep Framework

INTERCONNECT includes Lumerical’s robust optimization framework
Photonic integrated circuit designers can conduct multi-parameter optimizations via the built-in particle-swarm optimization algorithm, or define their own optimization algorithm

Time-domain and Frequency-domain Simulators

INTERCONNECT supports mixed signal representation of optical single and multi-mode signals, and electrical signals
PIC elements support fully bidirectional signal propagation through circuit topology
Simulations and analysis can be conducted in either the time domain or frequency domain based on the requirements of the designer

Time-Domain and Frequency-domain Simulators