Optical crossbar switches on InP

Increasingly, optical cross connects are being proposed as the basis for various photonic packet switching nodes. Combining optical switches with semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) has been shown to be a very effective method in creating a more scaleable cross connect which can have lower loss and crosstalk than a simple gate array. Building upon this concept, we demonstrate a very compact 4×4 (2×2 mm²) monolithic optical cross connect using sixteen 1×2 optically amplified suppressed interference switches (OASIS) While good crosstalk suppression performance (>35 dB) was achieved, practical devices will require a reduction of the insertion loss. Two efforts devoted to this goal, namely, the addition of a spot-size convertor and a waveguide tuning mirror were demonstrated to good effect