News: Suppliers
28 October 2025
Photon Design updates PICWave simulator
Photonic simulation CAD software developer Photon Design Ltd of Oxford, UK has updated its PICWave photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design and simulation tool with an intuitive new graphic user interface (GUI) and an enhanced feature set.
PICWave seamlessly integrates with Photon Design’s active component simulators (such as HAROLD) and passive component simulators (such as FIMMPROP) to give powerful PIC design, central to the engineer’s design flow, with flexible 3D time-evolving simulations. Active components that are integrated include semiconductor optcal amplifiers (SOAs), laser diodes, hybrid silicon lasers, distributed feedback lasers (DFBs), tunable lasers and ring lasers. In addition, rigorous models of gratings, common PIC components like directional couplers, and optimized lossless bends can all be imported.
“PICWave now features a more intuitive GUI, improving its look and feel; a bend simulation tool; and a notes section for tracking changes and annotating designs,” says CEO Dr Dominic Gallagher. “It is widely used in high-power, tapered laser applications, such as LiDAR, where it can simulate the thermal rollover effects as laser output power increases. It also models other physical effects such as carrier diffusion, current spreading and hole burning for complex devices such as hybrid silicon lasers. Its Wide-Band Gain Fitting algorithm ensures accurate gain results across a broad range of wavelengths.
“PICWave is ideally suited to analyzing the interaction of multiple optical components within larger circuits, enabling the simulation of optical propagation in complex, extended devices, sometimes metres in length. This far exceeds the capabilities of traditional FDTD [finite-difference time-domain] or FEM [finite-element method] Maxwell solvers,” Gallagher says. “The latest features enhance both the performance and productivity of our simulations.”
Photon Design exhibiting product range at ECOC 2025
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