Reply To: Calculating loss for a waveguide section which is not straight

[Ronald]

Dear Tuhin,

There are basically three loss factors in a bent waveguide:
1- material loss
2- sidewall (roughness) loss
3- radiation loss

The first two are also present in a straight guide. The extra loss in the bend is both an increase in (2), due to a higher field strength at the waveguide edge in a bend and (3). Both increase with smaller radii. To obtain (3) you need a complex (2D) modesolver that applies a conformal transformation to cylindrical coordinates. The complex index of the solution provides the bend loss. Hence, you need 2D bend solver, of which there are many, commercial ones like in VPI photonics, Lumerical or FIMwave, or open source solvers like in wgms3d.

To get the loss in the bent guide a good approximation is to add the radiation loss to the known straight waveguide loss.

Ronald