METHOD OF LINES FOR THE ANALYSIS OF THE PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTICS OF CURVED OPTICAL RIB WAVE-GUIDES

A numerical technique based on the method of lines is developed for the analysis of curved optical rib waveguides. The approach yields accurate solutions for the modes of both polarizations propagating along the curved waveguides. The values of the calculated bending losses are substantiated by experimental results. The method of lines has proven to be very efficient for the solution of straight and bent waveguide problems. To improve the accuracy of the discretization, we introduce an integration technique for the matrix representation of the differential operator. By approximately matching the boundary conditions at the interfaces of the waveguides, semivectorial solutions are obtained by considering the major field component.