2 SIMULATORS FOR PHOTONIC COMPUTER-AIDED-DESIGN

The computer-aided design of photonic systems offers many advantages f or systems design, optimization, and planning. We present a comparison of two simulation packages for photonic-device, circuit, and system d esign. Both were developed by the Australian Photonics Cooperative Res earch Centre: the optoelectronic, photonic, and advanced laser simulat or performs step-by-step simulations on complex photonic devices, circ uits, and systems, allowing for backward waves and compound resonators ; the gigabit optical link designer uses block processing of periodic waveforms to give an efficient estimation of eye diagrams and bit-erro r rates of time-division-multiplexed and wavelength-division-multiplex ed systems. The gigabit optical link designer and the optoelectronic, photonic advanced laser simulator are compared, and examples of typica l applications are given. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.