Rapidly reconfigurable optical networks that keep the data in the optical domain potentially offer significant advantages in latency, bandwidth and power dissipation. Existing optical switch technologies (e.g., MEMS-based) are limited to millisecond-scale reconfiguration times, severely reducing their application space. The emerging field of silicon photonics enables optical switches operating on a nanosecond scale [1]. However, full utilization of the speed of these switches requires nanosecond-scale burst-mode transceivers, similar to those used in passive optical networks [2]. In this work, we reporta burst-mode receiver for optical links in a dynamically reconfigurable network. Through the introduction of interlocking search algorithms, a robust 25Gb/s burst-mode operation is achieved with 31ns lock time, -10.9dBm sensitivity, and 4.4pJ/b efficiency.
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