Abstract: Banyan networks are really attractive for serving as
the optical switching architectures due to their unique properties of
small depth and absolute signal loss uniformity. The fact has been
established that the limitations of blocking nature and the nonavailability
of proper connections due to non-rearrangeable property
can be easily ruled out using electro-optic MZI switches as basic
switching elements. Combination of the horizontal expansion and
vertical stacking of optical banyan networks is an appropriate scheme
for constructing non-blocking banyan-based optical switching
networks. The interconnected banyan switching fabrics (IBSF) have
been considered and analyzed to best serve the purpose of optical
switching with electro-optic MZI basic elements. The cross/bar state
interchange for the switches has been facilitated by appropriate
voltage switching or the by the switching of operating wavelength.
The paper is dedicated to the modification of the basic switching
element being used as well as the architecture of the switching
network.
Abstract: We demonstrate a 1×4 coarse wavelength
division-multiplexing (CWDM) planar concave grating
multiplexer/demultiplexer and its application in re-configurable
optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) system in silicon-on-insulator
substrate. The wavelengths of the demonstrated concave grating
multiplexer align well with the ITU-T standard. We demonstrate a
prototype of ROADM comprising two such concave gratings and four
wide-band thermo-optical MZI switches. Undercut technology which
removes the underneath silicon substrate is adopted in optical switches
in order to minimize the operation power. For all the thermal heaters,
the operation voltage is smaller than 1.5 V, and the switch power is
~2.4 mW. High throughput pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)
data transmission with up to 100 Gb/s is demonstrated, showing the
high-performance ROADM functionality.