Abstract
In this article, we report the development of a strictly non-blocking 8 × 8 silicon photonics switch designed to operate in the O-band. This 8 × 8 switch is based on path-independent insertion-loss topology and is composed of 2 × 2 thermo-optic double Mach-Zehnder switches and adiabatic intersections. The fabricated 8 × 8 switch chip is electrically packaged with a ceramic chip carrier and inserted into a socket on a printed circuit board. As for the optical connection, an optical fiber array and edge couplers are used. The fabricated 8 × 8 switch exhibits an average fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 16.6 dB, including a fiber to chip coupling loss of 11.2 dB and crosstalk of less than -30 dB over a bandwidth of 70 nm. Moreover, we investigate the nonlinear characteristics of Si devices in the O-band. The cw input/output response and degradation free 28-Gb/s OOK signal transmission demonstrate that two-photon absorption and four-wave mixing are not significant when the input power is less than approximately 4 mW. These results indicate that it is possible to produce low-loss and low-crosstalk silicon photonics switches that operate in the O-band.
Highlights
D ATA centers are required to handle a significant amount of data flow while suppressing increases in electric power consumption
We report on a strictly non-blocking 8 × 8 silicon photonics switch designed for the O-band
We have fabricated and characterized an 8 × 8 switch based on the double-MZ path-independent insertion-loss (PILOSS) topology
Summary
D ATA centers are required to handle a significant amount of data flow while suppressing increases in electric power consumption. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available online at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org By adopting these characteristics, some research groups have reported the development of networks based on optical switches [2]–[4]. In data center network applications, the O-band (1260 -1360 nm) is commonly used (e.g., 400G CWDM8, 400GBASE-LR/FR8) [7], [8] because the low dispersion of a standard single-mode fiber allows the cost of the devices to be reduced because some dispersion compensation techniques, such as digital coherent detection, are not necessary. SUZUKI et al.: STRICTLY NON-BLOCKING 8 × 8 SILICON PHOTONICS SWITCH OPERATING IN THE O-BAND
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