In this paper the new progress in the researching fields of optical switch were reviewed. A compute model for calculating the switch speed, extinction ratio, noise figure, dynamic range as well as the switch gain was presented. The switch time, contrast ratio of SOA gate are calculated and evaluated. The methods to suppress the ASE noise are discussed. A novel and special method to extract optical route signal is presented. The result of the theoretical analysis showed that the optical gain of the SOA should be setup in optimum so as to obtain the best performances of the switch. An optical switch matrix using the polarization-insensitive strained quantum well SOAs and the optical couplers was fabricated and a novel and simplified method for extracting the logical control signal of the optical switch was specially designed, in which the optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) techniques could be used to fabricate a compact, effect, high speed and low-cost optical switch matrix. IT is show that with the rapid improvement of OEIC techniques, the larger scale switch matrix based on SOA gate would be able to get into practice in the near future.
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