Silicon-based tunable optical delay lines and switches for next generation optical telecommunications

We report our recent progress on reconfigurable optical true time delay lines (RTTDL) and optical switches. The RTTDL is composed of 8 stages of MZIs connected by 7 waveguide pairs with an incremental length difference. Variable optical attenuators are inserted in the delay waveguides to suppress crosstalk caused by the residual signals from noise paths. Transmission of a 25 Gbps PRBS signal confirms the signal fidelity after a maximum of 1.27 ns delay. The optical switch is based on a Benes architecture with Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI) as the switching elements. Both p-i-n diodes and silicon resistive micro-heaters are integrated in the MZI arms for electrical tuning and phase correction, respectively. The measured on-chip insertion loss of the 4×4 switch is < 8 dB. Transmission of a 50 Gb/s quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) optical signal verifies its switching functionality.

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