Low-loss Acousto-optic Photonic Switch
The information super-highway will require switches capable of rerouting
signals from one optical fiber to another.
Unfortunately, existing mechanical switches have too slow of a response
time for many applications, and electrooptic switch arrays are
difficult to control, so we are investigating an acoustooptic switch
that diffracts light from each fiber towards the desired destination fiber.
We have developed a new approach to the implementation of a space division
optical crossbar using a single acoustooptic device that can
permute single mode optical fiber inputs
to single mode outputs without suffering from extraneous
fan-in and fan-out losses that plague other optical crossbars.
This is the first optical switch using only one acoustooptic
device to implement an entire crossbar, greatly simplifying switch control,
and the first able to eliminate
constance radiance fan-in losses.
We have experimentally demonstrated several
switches including a 1x10, 3x3, 4x6, and 7x7 switch with a 1 microsec
reconfiguration time.
A scaled up version is being constructed that can
permute 12 single mode optical fiber inputs
to more than 12 single mode outputs.
[Book Chapters: 1,
Journal Publications: 19,
22,
35]
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