The dispersion characteristics and transverse field distribution of the fundamental and higher order modes are analyzed for polymeric ridge multimode waveguide by a new technique which is based on the combination of the effective index method and the variational method. An algorithm is implemented to study the effect of the structure parameters and dimensions on the dispersion curves. The optical field distribution of the fundamental and higher order modes for TM modes are computed. The single mode conditions of polymeric ridge waveguide are obtained. The relationship between the curvature radius and the bending loss of S-shaped ridge waveguide are studied with wide-angle finite-difference beam propagation method and effective index method. The conclusion is: when the curvature radius is larger than 5000 μm, the bending loss will not decrease distinctly even if the curvature radius increases, and the light can propagate stably in the S-shaped ridge waveguide. The dispersion characteristics and transverse field distribution of the fundamental and higher order modes are analyzed for polymeric ridge multimode waveforms by a new technique which is based on the combination of the effective index method and the variational method. An algorithm is implemented to study the effect of the structure parameters and dimensions on the dispersion curves. The optical field distribution of the fundamental and higher order modes for TM modes are computed. The single mode conditions of polymeric ridge waveguide are obtained. The relationship between the radius of curvature and the bending loss of S -shaped ridge waveguide are studied with wide-angle finite-difference beam propagation method and effective index method. The conclusion is: when the radius of curvature is larger than 5000 μm, the bending loss will not decrease distinctly even even if the curvature radius increases, and the light can propagate stably in the S-shaped ridge waveguide.