1991 Volume 19 Issue 4 Pages 305-315
Evaluation technology for optical waveguides and guided-wave devices play an important roleinrealizing optical integrated circuits. We can find various methods to be proposed for this purpose. Most of these techniques involve the measurement of the relationship between optical powers launched into and coupled out of the waveguide. However, these methods are not directly available for the evaluation of devices in a fabrication process and not suitable for understanding of device operation. We have proposed a microcomputer-assisted video camera observing system to evaluate guided-wave devices and measured large variety of optical waveguides and optical integrated circuits. The system, in spite of its simple construction, has a great advantage of nondestructive measurement and possible observation of light field profile propagating in optical devices. Here we review the system and show some results obtained with a guided-wave Geodesic lens, two-types of gratings, directional coupler, and optical branches. We can easily comprehend the operation of such devices as well as obtain a mode propagation loss,
