Reconfigurable Optical Wireless Switches for On-Chip Interconnection

Abstract

Optical Wireless Networks on-Chip have been recently proposed as alternative paradigm to overcome the communication bottleneck in computing architectures based on electrical networks. In this paper, we propose the design of a 33 switching matrix for optical wireless on-chip interconnection. The design exploits integrated optical phased arrays to guarantee the communication among three transmitters and three receivers. In this work, the effect of multipath propagation in the on-chip multi-layer structure is taken into account, and the impact of the cladding layer thickness is evaluated. The proposed device is intended to interconnect multiple nodes assuring reconfigurability and high bandwidth.

LNOI Wireless Switches Based on Optical Phased Arrays for On-Chip Communication

“…is the wavelength in the cladding medium with free-space wavelength λ. For the chosen distance d a ≈ λ m , only one main lobe exists in the radiation diagram [57]. The main radiation lobe can be steered in the XY−plane by applying a suitable phase difference α between the antenna elements comprising the OPA.…”

4 × 4 Integrated Switches Based on On-Chip Wireless Connection through Optical Phased Arrays

“…The characteristics of the taper antenna have already been investigated by the authors in [37,38], through three-dimensional FDTD simulations with standard near-to-far field transformation [40]. This antenna radiates mainly in the direction of the mode propagation (i.e., the x axis in the reference system in Figure 1).…”

“…Moreover, its gain increases with the taper length L T , with a corresponding decrease in the half-power beam width, i.e., the angular aperture of the radiated beam. Further details on the radiation characteristics of the single-taper antenna can be found in [37,38].…”

“…The overall radiation diagram of a uniform linear array made of N a identical antennas can be obtained through the multiplication of the electromagnetic field radiated by the single antenna by the array factor (AF), expressed as [38,39]:…”

“…In this paper, we propose a broadband 4 × 4 switch, based on on-chip wireless connection through Optical Phased Arrays (OPA), for WDM signal routing in OWiNoCs. The concept of the Optical Wireless Switch (OWS) has been proposed by the authors in [37,38], where 1 × 5 and 3 × 3 switches were reported. The beam radiated by the input OPA can be steered toward the addressed receivers by applying a phase shift α to the signals feeding the seven antennas in the OPA.…”