$4\times 4$ Silicon Optical Switches Based on Double-Ring-Assisted Mach–Zehnder Interferometers

Abstract

We present the experimental demonstration of a 4 × 4 silicon electro-optic (EO) switch fabric based on a Benes architecture. Double-ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometers (DR-MZIs) are utilized as the basic switch elements. Silicon resistive microheaters and p-i-n diodes are embedded in both of the microrings of the DR-MZIs for low-loss thermooptic (TO) phase correction and high-speed switching operation, respectively. The TO tuning power dissipated to align all resonances is 22.37 mW. The maximum EO tuning power required to switch all DR-MZIs is only 1.38 mW. The average on-chip insertion loss is in the range of 4-5.8 dB for all switching states. The transmission spectrum measurement shows that the device can perform switching in a ∼35-GHz spectral window with the worst crosstalk being −18.4 dB.

A Review of Silicon‐Based Integrated Optical Switches

“…Using a similar principle, a 4 × 4 silicon integrated optical switch based on DR-MZIs has been further demonstrated. [63] The architecture is shown in A larger scale 16 × 16 silicon integrated optical switch based on DR-MZIs was further reported by Guo et al [70] The 2 × 2 DR-MZI basic element is also further improved compared with previous studies, and the basic structure is shown in (re-drawn from [63] ).…”

“…Using a similar principle, a 4 × 4 silicon integrated optical switch based on DR‐MZIs has been further demonstrated. [ 63 ] The architecture is shown in Figure , which is a rearrangeable non‐blocking switch with the 4 × 4 Benes switch fabric. There are a total of six switch elements organized in three stages, and each switch element is a 2×2 DR‐MZI switch described above.…”

Reconfigurable High-Resolution Microwave Photonic Filter Based on Dual-Ring-Assisted MZIs on the Si3N4 Platform

“…Figure 1(a) depicts the schematic structure of the optical filter comprising two stages of DR-MZIs in a 2 × 2 lattice architecture [24], [25]. In order to make the filter reconfigurable, the originally fixed coupler is replaced by a tunable MZI-coupler as shown in Fig.…”

Angled MMI optical switch

“…The Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) is one of the most commonly used optical instruments. The basic MZI structure consists of two waveguide arms, two Y-junctions, one of which serves as a beam splitter and the other as a beam combiner Several types of optical switch have been demonstrated over the past years using a variety of building blocks, including double-ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) [3,4], microring resonators (MRRs) [5], multimode interferometers (MMIs) [6], and MEMS-actuated adiabatic couplers [7] The primary advantage of MZI is its excellent resistance to temperature variations. But their large footprint results in a big footprint, when several MZIs are needed on a single chip loop-terminated asymmetric MZI (LT-aMZI) design based on the widespread SOI technology were proposed [8], enabling a smaller footprint and enhance the performance of the standard MZI in many applications.…”