Electro-optical co-simulation for integrated CMOS photonic circuits with VerilogA

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Optical Engineering
• Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

Background:

• Accurate simulation of electro-optical systems is crucial for developing advanced photonic integrated circuits.
• Existing simulation tools may lack the flexibility to model complex photonic components from fundamental physical principles.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel VerilogA toolkit library for simulating electro-optical systems.
• To enable the organic construction of complex photonic devices through the instantiation of fundamental primitives.
• To facilitate co-simulation between optical and electronic circuits.

Main Methods:

• Development of a Cadence toolkit library using VerilogA.
• Definition of fundamental photonic components at the physical level.
• Simulation of optical signal amplitude and phase, and optical-electrical interactions.
• Validation against existing simulations and analytical solutions.

Main Results:

• The toolkit successfully simulates both simple (e.g., ring resonators) and complex devices (e.g., single-sideband modulators, WDM links, Pound Drever Hall Locking loops).
• Simulation results show strong agreement with established methods and theoretical predictions.
• Demonstrated capability for co-simulation with electronic circuits.

Conclusions:

• The presented VerilogA toolkit library provides a robust and flexible platform for electro-optical system simulation.
• The component-based approach simplifies the modeling of intricate photonic devices.
• Co-simulation capabilities accelerate the development and verification of electro-optic systems.