Optical Crossbar Switch with Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

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Abstract
Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have a number of attractive properties for use in photonic switches. SOAs offer nanosecond switching times, extinction ratios in excess of 40 dB, and small signal gains of approximately 15 dB. In addition they can be monolithically integrated, and thus can potentially be fabricated in volume and used in large switch matrices. Here we report on our recent demonstration of an 8×8 optical crossbar switch based upon discrete SOAs. Other authors [1-3] have reported on SOA-based optical switches at the device level. Our work focuses on the demonstration of the technology at the system level. This demonstration is a significant step towards the widespread use of SOA-based optical switches because it provides a testbed for exploring and identifying the relationships between device parameters and system performance requirements. A block diagram of the optical crossbar switch is shown in Figure 1. The switch is constructed in a modular fashion and consists of optical, digital, analog, and computer modules. Figure 2 shows two photographs of the completed optical crossbar switch.