16 × 16 silicon Mach–Zehnder interferometer switch actuated with waveguide microheaters

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a 16×16 reconfigurably nonblocking optical switch fabric using a Benes architecture. The switch fabric consists of 56 2×2 Mach–Zehnder interferometer based elementary switches, with each integrated with a pair of waveguide microheaters. The average on-chip insertion loss is ∼5.2  dB for both of the “all-cross” and the “all-bar” states, with a loss variation of 1 dB over all routing paths. The cross talk for all switching states is better than −30  dB. The switching time of the switch element is about 22 μs. The switching functionality is verified by transmission of a 40  Gb/s quadrature phase-shift keying optical signal.