This example demonstrates running optical simulations on an imbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) design from the Cadence Virtuoso design environment. This example will study the transmission transient waveform using INTERCONNECT's optical transient analyzer (OTRAN), and study the transmission gain spectrum using INTERCONNECT's optical network analyzer (ONA).
Overview
Understand the simulation workflow and key results
We are considering a schematic-driven workflow where the circuit schematic is designed in Virtuoso schematic editor and the circuit is simulated in INTERCONNECT. The workflow for the frequency-domain (ONA) simulation and time-domain (OTRAN) simulation is exactly the same, but with different analyzers to capture different results. In this section, we use the ONA simulation as an example to demonstrate the workflow.
The circuit is an imbalanced MZI, composed of a couple of grating couplers, a couple of multimode interference couplers (MMI), and two pieces of waveguide. This MZI circuit is measured by an ONA in the frequency domain and an Optical Oscilloscope in the time domain.
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Step 1: Schematic design
The circuit schematic is designed in Cadence Virtuoso.
Step 2: Configure ADE Explorer
We define the Design variables, monitored output ports, and analyses arguments in the Analog Design Environment (ADE) Explorer window. An analysis “ONA” is defined to control the measurement type and range.
Step 3: Netlist and run simulation
We then can generate the optical netlist and run the simulation. The simulation runs in INTERCONNECT at the background.
Step 4: Display results
The gain spectrum of the imbalanced MZI will be recorded and users can plot it in the Results Browser.
Run and results
Instructions for running the model and discussion of key results
Step 1: Load libraries and schematic design
- Open the Virtuoso Library Mananger (…/Tools/Library Manager).
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Add the “Imabalanced_MZI_design” and “opticalLib” libraries (Edit/Library Path). The “opticalLib” libraries can be found in:
<virtuoso installation directory>/tools.lnx86/dfII/etc/cdslib"
The “Imabalanced_MZI_design” (extracted from Imbalanced_MZI_design.tar) is available for download in this app gallery example. - In the “Imabalanced_MZI_design” library and *_TestBench cells, double click on the “schematic” view to visualize the schematic designs.
This example of the imbalanced MZI has the following frequency domain schematic (from "Frequency_Analysis_TestBench"):
and the following time domain schematic (from "Transient_Analysis_TestBench"):
Step 2: Configure ADE Explorer
- Double click on the “maestro” View to open up the ADE Explorer configuration session.
The ADE Explorer session should configure as below:
Step 3: Netlist and run simulation
- In the ADE Explorer session, generate the netlist by Simulation/Netlist/Create.
- Click the run button. The sunning status will be updated. Note that the INTERCONNECT session will run in the background.
- Plot the result by opening Tools/Results Browser and double-clicking Opt5/fiber/mode1 in the *_TestBench.
The gain spectrum will be generated by the simulation above.
The following signal waveform will be generated by the time domain OTRAN simulation:
Updating the model with your parameters
Instructions for updating the model based on your device parameters
Frequency domain simulation with ONA
User can update the frequency domain simulation with the following parameters:
- Set ONA start and stop wavelength
- Set the simulation Number of Points
- Set the simulation signal polarization (Orthogonal identifier)
Time domain simulation with OTRAN
User can update the time domain simulation with the following parameters:
- Set the wavelength of interest in the Laser Source
- Set the OTRAN Time Window
- Set the OTRAN Number of Samples
Additional resources
Additional documentation, examples and training material
See also
Related Ansys Innovation Courses