DRC challenges and solutions for non-Manhattan layout designs

As photonic circuit designs allow and require a wide variety of geometrical shapes that do not exist in traditional integrated circuit (IC) designs, established design rule checking (DRC) methods are severely inadequate and are increasingly unable to fulfill the requirements for reliable and consistent geometrical verification of such layouts. This study presents the application of equation-based DRC, an extended DRC technique that addresses the DRC challenges brought by the non-Manhattan geometries that are widely present in photonic layouts.