Technique for characterizing dynamic crosstalk in 3-D photonic crossconnects

Summary form only given. Photonic crossconnects (PXC) based on 3-D MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) are promising because of their ability to scale to large port counts linearly. The operating principle of 3-D MEMS PXC is illustrated. A connection is made from an input port to an output port by properly tilting one input mirror and one output mirror. Usually, the input and output mirrors are arranged as two-dimensional (e.g., square, rectangular, triangular, etc.) arrays. We have proposed and demonstrated a novel sensitive method to characterize the dynamic optical crosstalk. Our test shows similar dynamic crosstalk signatures from different pre-production crossconnects. We have confirmed that although dynamic crosstalk can be much higher than the corresponding static crosstalk levels, they are likely to affect system performance only under rare and/or extreme operating conditions. Lastly, we have proposed engineering and systems level mitigation techniques to minimize these effects, should they be necessary.