Silicon-microring-based thermo-optic non-blocking four-port optical router for optical networks-on-chip

Abstract

By using silicon-on-insulator platform and only four parallel-coupling one microring resonator routing elements, an active non-blocking four-port optical router was theoretically proposed for large-scale optical networks-on-chip (ONoC). Through the use of thermo-optic effect of silicon for tuning the resonance of each switching element, the router can work at 9 non-blocking routing states. Structure design and optimization were performed on the routing element at 1550 nm, and the routing topology and function were demonstrated for the four-port optical router. Detailed characterization was presented, including output spectrum, insertion loss, crosstalk, and power consumption. According to the analysis on all the data links of the router, the insertion loss is within the range of 0.13–3.36 dB, the crosstalk is <−19.46 dB, and the power consumption is within 0–88 mW. Comparison between this router and other reported four-port optical routers indicates that the proposed device uses the minimum number of rings (i.e. 4). Through using three-ring-based MRR instead of one-ring-based MRR, power consumption can be further decreased to 0–25 mW at the expense of small increased insertion loss for meeting the need of a large-scale (ONoC).