Variable delay DPSK receivers
An unbalanced Mach-Zehnder Interferometer loaded with a continuously tunable delay line realized with a coupled resonator optical waveguide
Continuous delay tunability from 66 ps (15 Gbaud) to 102 ps (9.85 Gbaud) Mach Zehnder extinction ratio > 15 dB Low loss variation with tuning (< 1dB)
Applications: counteract transmission impairments, dynamic bandwidth allocation, gridless networking, …
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Mattarei, M.; Canciamilla, A.; Grillanda, S.; Morichetti, F., “Variable Symbol-Rate DPSK Receiver Based on Silicon Photonics Coupled-Resonator Delay Line,” Lightwave Technology, Journal of , vol.32, no.19, pp.3317,3323, Oct.1, 1 2014OSNR monitor
A ring resonator extract the most sensitive part of the band of the signal and send it to an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer to obtain the autocorrelation of the signal
Footprint <0.6mm2
OSNR range from 8dB to 28dB
Accuracy of 0.4dB
3 times more sensitive than previous techniques
Applications: Signal monitoring, WDM channels, sensing, …
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Morichetti, F.; Annoni, A.; Sorel, M.; Melloni, A., “High-Sensitivity In-Band OSNR Monitoring System Integrated on a Silicon Photonics Chip,” Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE , vol.25, no.19, pp.1939,1942, Oct.1, 2013 A. Annoni and F. Morichetti, “Enhancing the Sensitivity of Interferometer Based In-Band OSNR Monitoring by Narrow Band Filtering,” J. Lightwave Technol. 31, 1447-1453 (2013)Reconfigurable filters with continuous bandwidth tunability
An unbalanced Mach-Zehnder Interferometer loaded with two thermally activated microring resonators (all pass filter configuration)
Bandwidth tunability from 10% to 90 % FSR Negligible loss variation with tuning Off-band rejection preserved
Applications: reconfigurable/adaptive filters, gridless networking, …
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Piero Orlandi, Carlo Ferrari, Michael John Strain, Antonio Canciamilla, Francesco Morichetti, Marc Sorel, Paolo Bassi, and Andrea Melloni, “Reconfigurable silicon filter with continuous bandwidth tunability,” Opt. Lett. 37, 3669-3671 (2012) Piero Orlandi, Francesco Morichetti, Michael John Strain, Marc Sorel, Paolo Bassi, and Andrea Melloni, “Photonic Integrated Filter With Widely Tunable Bandwidth,” J. Lightwave Technol. 32, 897-907 (2014)Coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROWs)
Long chains of coupled microring resonators (up to 20) thermally controlled through micro-heaters 
Rings’ radius down to 5 mm Insertion loss 50 dB 95% light coupled into the CROW No transmission penalties with respect to a conventional silicon waveguide
Applications: WDM filters, tunable delay lines, wavelength conversion, …
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C. Ferrari, A. Canciamilla, F. Morichetti, M. Sorel, and A. Melloni, “Penalty-free transmission in a silicon coupled resonator optical waveguide over the full C-band,” Opt. Lett., vol. 36, no. 19, pp. 3948-3950, Oct. 2011. F. Morichetti, C. Ferrari, A.Canciamilla, and A. Melloni, “The first decade of coupled resonator optical waveguides: bringing slow light to applications,” Laser Photonics Rev., 1–23 (2011) / DOI 10.1002/lpor.201100018.