Two simulators for photonic computer-aided design

The computer-aided design of photonic systems offers many advantages for systems design, optimization, and planning. We present a comparison of two simulation packages for photonic-device, circuit, and system design. Both were developed by the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre: the optoelectronic, photonic, and advanced laser simulator performs step-by-step simulations on complex photonic devices, circuits, 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-error rates of time-division-multiplexed and wavelength-division-multiplexed systems. The gigabit optical link designer and the optoelectronic, photonic advanced laser simulator are compared, and examples of typical applications are given.