Large-scale silicon photonics circuits and packaging for optical switching

摘要

Data traffic in telecom and datacom is increasing rapidly, and thus high-throughput energy-efficient networks are highly demanded. As opposed to the current electronics-based packet switching networks, optical circuit switching (OCS) networks offer an ultrawide bandwidth with low energy consumption since the optical fiber paths accommodate high-speed and highly multiplexed optical signals with transparency. Large-port-count optical switches operating faster than millisecond are the key device in the OCS systems, which can be realized by silicon photonics that also offer compactness, low-cost, and low power consumption. We review the recent progress of optical switches based on advanced silicon photonics circuits and packaging technologies.