Automated routing and control of silicon photonic switch fabrics

Annoni, A. et al. (2016) Automated routing and control of silicon photonic switch fabrics. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 22(6), 3600408. (doi: 10.1109/JSTQE.2016.2551943)

Abstract

Automatic reconfiguration and feedback controlled routing is demonstrated in an 8×8 silicon photonic switch fabric based on Mach-Zehnder interferometers. The use of non-invasive Contactless Integrated Photonic Probes (CLIPPs) enables real-time monitoring of the state of each switching element individually. Local monitoring provides direct information on the routing path, allowing an easy sequential tuning and feedback controlled stabilization of the individual switching elements, thus making the switch fabric robust against thermal crosstalk, even in the absence of a cooling system for the silicon chip. Up to 24 CLIPPs are interrogated by a multichannel integrated ASIC wire-bonded to the photonic chip. Optical routing is demonstrated on simultaneous WDM input signals that are labelled directly on-chip by suitable pilot tones without affecting the quality of the signals. Neither preliminary circuit calibration nor lookup tables are required, being the proposed control scheme inherently insensible to channels power fluctuations.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sorel, Professor Marc and Strain, Dr Michael
• Authors: Annoni, A., Guglielmi, E., Carminati, M., Grillanda, S., Ciccarella, P., Ferrari, G., Sorel, M., Strain, M., Sampietro, M., Melloni, A., and Morichetti, F.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• ISSN: 1077-260X
• ISSN (Online): 1558-4542
• Published Online: 08 April 2016
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2016 IEEE
• First Published: First published in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics 2016
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher