Integrated 1 $\times$ 8 Optical Phased-Array Switch With Low Polarization Sensitivity for Broadband Optical Packet Switching

An InP/InGaAsP integrated 1 times 8 optical phased-array switch is designed, fabricated, and characterized for high-throughput broadband wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical packet switching application. With a single stage of phase shifters utilizing carrier-induced refractive index change, switching to the eight output ports is demonstrated successfully. The polarization-dependent loss is 2.2 dB in the worst case, and the wavelength-dependent loss is less than 2.5 dB across the entire C-band (1520-1580 nm) with the average extinction ratio of 17.7 dB. The measured reconfiguration time is shorter than 6 ns. Low-penalty transmission of a 40-Gb/s non-return-to-zero signal is also demonstrated for the first time. These features make the integrated phased-array switch an attractive candidate to be deployed in the future high-capacity optical packet switching networks.