Optimal design for large-scale MZI silica on silicon optical thermo switching matrix

Abstract

Large-scale optical switching matrix is the core technology of automatically switched optical network. With the significant increase of the matrix size, the study showed that the nonlinear factors, such as the correlation of the wavelength, phase and polarization between the optical switches have major impacts for the system performance. Because the full-size optical simulation is not available now, the research will be a great significance that we establish an overall model with not only considering the performance of optical switch unit, but also reflecting the structural characteristics of the network.In this paper, we calculated the transmission field of 2×2 Mach –Zehnder(MZI) silica on silicon thermo optic(TO) switch with different structure by using the finite difference beam propagation method(BPM). On the basis of optimization design, we constructed and simulated the large-scale 16×16 MZI silicon-based SiO2 Silica on silicon thermo switching matrix. The results are: In TE Mode, for Crossbar and banyan structures, insertion losses are 13.35 dB and 4.3638 dB; crosstalk losses are 27.125~29.0173 dB and 42.2318-43.7159 dB; extinction ratios are 29.57 dB and 26.79 dB respectively.