Architecture and Devices for Silicon Photonic Switching in Wavelength, Polarization and Mode

Abstract

Switching can be performed with multiple physical dimensions of an optical signal. Previously optical switching was mainly focused in the wavelength domain. In this paper we discuss the general architecture of integrated silicon photonic switches by exploiting multi-dimensions in wavelength, polarization, and mode. To route a data channel from one input port to an arbitrary output port in a network node, three basic functions are required: de-multiplexing, switching, and multiplexing. The multiplexing and de-multiplexing processes can be realized in any one physical dimension. The capacity of a switch can be effectively scaled by using joint physical dimensions. As two examples, we first present a wavelength switch based on dual-nanobeam cavities with high quality factors, a low power consumption, and a compact footprint. We then propose a design of a mode-polarization-wavelength selective switch by leveraging three physical dimensions, and experimentally demonstrate the building blocks and key functionalities.

Ultracompact and low-power-consumption silicon thermo-optic switch for high-speed data

“…The mode volume and Q-factor of the PCN cavity are iteratively optimized by using a 2.5D variational finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) analysis tool. The optimization process can be found in our previous work [17]. In order to obtain a reasonable bandwidth for the switch, the Q-factor of the PCN is carefully tuned to be about 2000.…”

“…In a previous work [17], we demonstrated a power efficient switch by introducing high quality factor (Q-factor) resonators in the MZI switch. However, the accompanied narrow bandwidth with the high Q-factor limits the performance of the switch in high-speed data transmission.…”

On-chip silicon photonic controllable 2 × 2 four-mode waveguide switch

“…In a multimode signal processing component, a multimode switch is one of the most important components to enable advanced processing functions for the MDM systems, especially, when combining MDM with WDM techniques, allowing an enhancement of data rates up to Tbps in a multi-mode waveguide that has been demonstrated in recent works 19 , 20 . The functionalities of optical mode switches have been achieved in on-chip photonic devices with both input and output signals in the single-mode mechanism 21 , 22 . In multimode optical communication, multimode optically switching is a big challenge in interconnect systems.…”

Silicon Mode (de)Multiplexer Based on Cascaded Particle-Swarm-Optimized Counter-Tapered Couplers

“…But the lengths of the reported TDC-based mode (de)multiplexers are conventionally very long. Thus, it is challenging to achieve a mode (de)multiplexer with compact footprint, low crosstalk, broad bandwidth, and excellent scalability, especially when mode (de)multiplexers are used to construct hybrid (de)multiplexers or switches [28][29][30]. In this paper, we propose a design of a silicon mode (de)multiplexer based on cascaded particle-swarm-optimized counter-tapered couplers.…”