Demonstration of a splitter/router based on a chirped waveguide grating router

We propose and demonstrate a novel method to build a device that acts like an optical multiplexer in one wavelength band and an optical power splitter in another one. The method is based on a chirped waveguide grating router design. There is no penalty in terms of insertion loss or crosstalk for the routing characteristics of the device but there is a tradeoff between the splitter bandwidth and the splitter excess loss. The simulated and experimental results are in good qualitative agreement.