Nonblocking optical planar switching matrices of short length

Planar switching matrices of parallel waveguides (WGs) have reduced loss due to the absence of tapering but require some confinement of wave propagation reported from Kerr nonlinearities (NL). Parallel switching matrices are fed by the multiple splitting of the input WGs, an appropriate network model is the parallel version of the Spanke-Benes (PSB) network and the reduction of the number of stages (NSs) below N (for N i/o) is analyzed. However, in the parallel case, regarding WGs and SB networks, the location of switches can no longer be fixed but must be a moving location (ML). From the several parallel paths through the PSB network the shortest path is chosen either at the end by path selection switches (PS-SWs) or at the beginning of the switching matrix, respectively. It turns out that the reduction of NS of the switching matrix and in turn the saving of the number of switches (NSWs) is compensated by the number of PS-SWs at the end or at the beginning of the matrix. The replacement of the PS-SWs by combiners at the output (i) restores the energy balance but (ii) causes phase mismatch (iii) provides redundant paths (iv) restricts the overall NS to the NS of the SB network for each copy but (v) improves the nonblocking (NB) characteristic. The routing of the switching matrices and their optical implementation is also briefly discussed.