32 × 32 Port Microsecond Reconfigurable All-Optical Cross Connect

Abstract

We present a 32 × 32 port optical cross connect that uses diffraction from a Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) as the switching element. This system is capable of switching from any input to any output single mode optical fiber with a reconfiguration time of 12 µs. Once set, the latency of the system is only due to the free-space travel of light through the optics, and is about 2 ns. The switch is polarization, data rate, and protocol agnostic, so it will retain its relevance regardless of advances in optical signal formatting. The power consumption of the switch is also independent of the data rate. In addition, considering that all the elements are available off the shelf, the switch is cost-effective.