Optical Switches
After a detailed introductory discussion of general concepts, which apply to optical switches regardless of their implementation technology, the following sections cover opto-mechanical switches and liquid crystal technologies for optical switching, inclu
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Optical Switches Shifu Yuan and John E. Bowers
Abstract After a detailed introductory discussion of general concepts, which apply to optical switches regardless of their implementation technology, the following sections cover opto-mechanical switches and liquid crystal technologies for optical switching, including small matrix switches and wavelength selective switches. Planar lightwave circuit (PLC) based optical switch technologies constitute the topic of the next section, and the treatment includes switches in various material systems such as LiNbO3 , polymer, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), and switching by means of the electro-optic- or thermo-optic effect. The following, major part of the chapter covers MEMS-based switches including 2D and 3D switches, switching matrices and wavelength selective switches as well. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of piezo-electric actuator-based matrix switches. The description of optical switches includes their fundamentals, including underlying physics, operation principles, and generic implementations, typical characteristics of commercially available devices, and recent developments of switches that are still in the R&D stage.
10.1 General Concepts of Optical Switching 10.1.1 Introduction Optical switches are important devices for optical fiber communication systems where they are used for protection, restoration, wavelength routing, fibermanagement, automatic patch panel, and in optical cross-connects [1–3]. As the majority of optical communication systems use single mode fibers (SMFs), we will focus on SMF optical switches in this chapter. An optical switch offers to optically switch fiber circuits without doing expensive optical-electronic-optical (OEO) conS. Yuan (B) Calient Technologies, 25 Castilian Drive, Goleta, CA 93117, USA e-mail: [email protected] J.E. Bowers Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 H. Venghaus, N. Grote (eds.), Fibre Optic Communication, Springer Series in Optical Sciences 161, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42367-8_10
S. Yuan and J.E. Bowers
versions. Such a switch is transparent to all protocols, data formats, and modulation formats since it only rearranges the physical fiber circuit. The various classes of optical switches include 1 × 2, 2 × 2, 1 × N , and large scale N × M matrix switches, wavelength selective switches (WSSs), and multicast N × M switches. Each category of optical switches has different technologies for implementation including liquid crystal (LC), planar lightwave circuit (PLC), micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS), and piezo-electronic actuator based technologies. Most optical switches use an electronically controlled mechanism to switch an optical signal into different directions. However, there are also all-optical switches that use optical signals to control switches [4] but these are beyond the scope of the present chapter. We will also not deal with optical switches th
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