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Devices realized in traditional photonic technologies suffer from extremely high sensitivity to temperature variations and fabrication mismatches. To correctly use these complex plasmonic circuits it is necessary to implement an electronic closed-loop control of these devices, in order to stabilize their working point and their optical properties. The first part of this work describes all the approaches taken in order to correctly sense the optical power of a plasmonic waveguide (sensors) and how to properly change the optical path of the waveguide (actuators).

All the auxiliary electronics to properly use the aforementioned sensors and actuators have been developed as well, and it has been connected to a motherboard. Thanks to a FPGA mounted on this board is then possible to properly control all the electronics. Moreover, thanks to the FPGA, a hardware-level control action has been implemented, in order to realize the control loop and make it possible to operate these devices in thermally-unstable scenarios. The second part of this work describes all the implemented strategies to realize such control action.