Abstract
We design and experimentally demonstrate scalable 2 × 2, 4 × 4 and 8 × 8 silicon photonic (SiPh) thermo-optic switch exhibiting low loss, low crosstalk, low power penalty, and BER below 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-10</sup> for payload data transmission. Less than 3.13 dB insertion loss (IL) and approximately 20.5 dB crosstalk is measured in the 8 × 8 SiPh banyan switch with thermal phase shifters. We also report on a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) in an indium phosphide (InP) technology platform with 25 dB gain and 7 dB noise figure enabling to transmit optical signals with large OSNR. Combining SiPh and InP technologies, we propose a lossless hybrid switch matrix with distributed SOA-based gain capable of transmitting data with near zero loss and low crosstalk over a large switching matrix. In hybrid SiPh/InP switches, the SOA gain compensates for the SiPh switch loss at the cost of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise but mitigated by bandpass optical filters. Lower IL from the SiPh switch requires less gain from the SOAs leading to less OSNR degradation. Experimentally validated building blocks confirmed scalability up to 64 × 64 in SiPh-InP hybrid platform.
Highlights
T HE exponential growing network traffic is forcing datacenters to increase their communications bandwidth with high switching speed and low energy consumption
Researchers are focusing on high-radix silicon photonic switches, compatible with complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) for higher integration density and lower manufacturing cost
We demonstrate the design and characterization of a low loss silicon photonic (SiPh) switch and its application in SiPh/indium phosphide (InP) hybrid optical switch
Summary
T HE exponential growing network traffic is forcing datacenters to increase their communications bandwidth with high switching speed and low energy consumption. A major constraint of high radix switch in SiPh technology is the optical losses from the multiple stages. An InP-SOA based active gain block can amplify the optical signal to compensate for the on-chip loss in large SiPh switches. Photonic wire bonded or flip-chip bonded semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) can be an impactful candidate in opto-electronic industry for the implementation of SiPh-InP switches [4], [2]. We demonstrate the design and characterization of a low loss SiPh switch and its application in SiPh/InP hybrid optical switch.
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