A novel and compact electro-optic modulator implemented by a combination of a 12 multimode interference (MMI) coupler and an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) modulator consisting of a microring and a phase modulator (PM) is presented and analyzed theoretically. It is shown that the proposed modulator offers both ultra-linearity and high output RF gain simultaneously, with no requirements for complicated and precise direct current (DC) control.

A bent-waveguide-based multimode interference (MMI) demultiplexer is designed for the operation at 0.85- and 1.55-µm wavelengths using the three-dimensional semi-vectorial beam-propagation method. First, it is shown that the use of a straight MMI waveguide results in a long coupler length of more than 1000µm for wavelength demulitplexing. To reduce the coupler length, we next introduce a bent MMI waveguide. Bending with a radius of 1500µm leads to a coupler length of less than 200µm. After designing two output waveguides connected to the MMI section, we finally choose a coupler length to be 175µm for efficient demultiplexing properties. Consequently, an output power of more than 90% can be obtained, leading to a low insertion loss of 0.34dB at both 0.85- and 1.55-µm wavelengths. The demultiplexer achieves small polarization dependence, i.e., less than 2dB difference in contrast and 0.02dB difference in insertion loss.