Routing and Placing Filters for Programmable Photonics

Abstract

Programmable photonic integrated circuits have the potential to increase the speed at which photonic applications are developed. However, in order to use these circuits effectively, there is a lack of efficient algorithms that compute an appropriate configuration for a given use case. We discuss a place-and-route algorithm that quickly calculates a solution to this problem. A specialized multi-stage simulated annealing process is introduced that gives a fast and effective way to configure the port-to-port response of programmable photonic integrated circuits.