Developments in planar waveguide components

The paper reviews recent developments of component design that have been realized for planar waveguide structures. The characteristic properties of the waveguide structure, such as propagation, insertion and bending loss are discussed. In addition, the performance of devices that have been fabricated, for several systems, such as couplers, U-branch splitters, star couplers, Mach-Zehnder wavelength division multiplexers, and frequency routers are discussed. Integrated-optic planar waveguide technology offers a solution to the potential high volume requirements of the commodity markets in the optoelectronics industry as well as the ability to proceed to higher levels of integration for custom solutions to fiber system challenges