Photon Design updates PIC simulator
Photon Design, a developer of photonic simulation CAD software, has updated its PICWave, photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design and simulation tool with an intuitive new GUI and an enhanced feature set.
The company says these latest features enhance both the performance and productivity of simulations.
PICWave integrates with Photon Design’s active component simulators, such as HAROLD, and passive component simulators, such as FIMMPROP, to give powerful PIC design, central to the engineer’s design flow, with flexible 3D, time-evolving, simulations.
Active components which are integrated include SOAs, laser diodes, hybrid silicon lasers, DFBs, tuneable lasers and ring lasers. In addition, models of gratings, common PIC components like directional couplers, and optimised lossless bends can all be imported.
Dominic Gallagher, CEO of Photon Design, said, “PICWave now features a more intuitive GUI, improving its look and feel; a bend simulation tool; and a notes section for tracking changes and annotating designs. It is widely used in high-power, tapered laser applications, such as LiDAR, where it can simulate the thermal rollover effects as laser output power increases. It also models other physical effects such as carrier diffusion, current spreading, and hole burning for complex devices such as hybrid silicon lasers. Its Wide-Band Gain Fitting algorithm ensures accurate gain results across a broad range of wavelengths."
He added: “PICWave is ideally suited to analysing the interaction of multiple optical components within larger circuits, enabling the simulation of optical propagation in complex, extended devices, sometimes metres in length. This far exceeds the capabilities of traditional FDTD or FEM Maxwell solvers.”
