We design a lossless 8 × 8 Silicon Photonics (SiPh)/Indium Phosphide (InP) hybrid optical switch. The design consists of an 8-channel InP gain block for coupling to an 8 × 8 thermally tuned Mach-Zehnder interferometer-based Banyan switch in a passive SiPh platform. The gain block is an array of eight 1300 μm-long semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). We experimentally verified the InP gain block while the SiPh chip is accounted by replacing it with a loss component. The SOA in line with the optical signal path provides a net gain larger than 25 dB to compensate for the inherently large insertion loss of the 8 × 8 SiPh optical switch. The total energy consumption of the hybrid optical switch in lossless operation mode is 10.44 pJ/bit at 12.5 Gb/s.
A mode insensitive switch is proposed and experimentally demonstrated on a silicon-on-insulator platform using a balanced Mach–Zehnder interferometer structure with a mode insensitive phase shifter for on-chip mode division multiplexing interconnects. Switching the first three quasi-transverse electric (TE) modes, consuming less than 40 mW power is demonstrated. The whole system exhibits approximately
−
2
,
−
3.7
, and
−
5.2
d
B
insertion loss for the TE0, TE1, and TE2 modes at 1550 nm, respectively. The corresponding crosstalk is less than
−
8.6
(
−
9
)
,
−
8
(
−
10.3
)
, and
−
10
d
B
(
−
10.3
d
B
) within the wavelength range of 40 nm (1535–1575 nm) for the cross (bar) states, respectively. The extinction ratios (ERs) for the cross (bar) states are 20.1 (19.5), 22.8 (33.7), and 15.4 dB (18.1 dB) for the TE0, TE1, and TE2 modes at 1550 nm, respectively. The payload transmission is also conducted using non-return-to-zero pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)-31 data signals at 10 Gb/s for single-mode transmission and simultaneous three-mode transmissions. For all the scenarios, open eyes are observed.
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