Multicast silicon photonic MEMS switches with gap-adjustable directional couplers.

We report on 4x20 silicon photonic MEMS switch that is capable of multicasting. The switch is built on passive optical crossbar network with gap-adjustable directional couplers. The switch has high on-off extinction ratio (59 dB), low insertion loss (< 4.0 dB), small footprint (1.2x4.5 mm2), and fast response (9.8 µs). The switching voltage is 9.6 V and 20 dB bandwidth is 31.5 nm. One-to-two and one-to-four multicast operations are demonstrated.

[1]  Laurent Schares,et al.  Silicon Photonic Switch Fabrics in Computer Communications Systems , 2015, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[2]  Linjie Zhou,et al.  16 × 16 silicon Mach–Zehnder interferometer switch actuated with waveguide microheaters , 2016 .

[3]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  Large-Scale Polarization-Insensitive Silicon Photonic MEMS Switches , 2018, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[4]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  Highly Scalable Digital Silicon Photonic MEMS Switches , 2016, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[5]  S. Namiki,et al.  Low-Insertion-Loss and Power-Efficient 32 × 32 Silicon Photonics Switch With Extremely High-Δ Silica PLC Connector , 2019, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[6]  H. M. Chu,et al.  A Wide-Tuning Silicon Ring-Resonator Composed of Coupled Freestanding Waveguides , 2014, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[7]  Kazuhiro Hane,et al.  Single and multiple optical switches that use freestanding silicon nanowire waveguide couplers , 2012, Light: Science & Applications.

[8]  Young-Kai Chen,et al.  Compact, low-loss and low-power 8×8 broadband silicon optical switch. , 2012, Optics express.

[9]  Ken Tanizawa,et al.  Ultra-compact 8 × 8 strictly-non-blocking Si-wire PILOSS switch. , 2014, Optics express.

[10]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  Optical beamsteering using an 8 × 8 MEMS phased array with closed-loop interferometric phase control. , 2013, Optics express.

[11]  Joseph E. Ford,et al.  A Multiport Microsecond Optical Circuit Switch for Data Center Networking , 2013, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[12]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  Large-scale broadband digital silicon photonic switches with vertical adiabatic couplers , 2016 .

[13]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  Large-scale silicon photonic switches with movable directional couplers , 2015 .

[14]  Ken Tanizawa,et al.  Broadband silicon photonics 8 × 8 switch based on double-Mach-Zehnder element switches. , 2017, Optics express.

[15]  Linjie Zhou,et al.  16 × 16 non-blocking silicon optical switch based on electro-optic Mach-Zehnder interferometers. , 2016, Optics express.

[16]  Michael Curt Elwenspoek,et al.  Comb-drive actuators for large displacements , 1996 .