The BOOM Project: Towards 160 Gb/s Packet Switching Using SOI Photonic Integrated Circuits and Hybrid Integrated Optical Flip-Flops

We present a 160 Gb/s optical packet switching architecture that performs label detection and packet wavelength con- version using photonic components integrated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide boards. For label detection, we report the fabrication of a 4-channel tunable, second-order microring resonator demultiplexer using the SOI nanowire waveguide platform. For all-optical wavelength conversion we report the integration and packaging of a cascaded SOI delay interferometer (DI) structure using SOI rib waveguides. Both components were assembled with an optical flip-flop to enable 160 Gb/s optical packet switching. The power penalty after the wavelength conversion process was ~4.5 dB with error performance well above the FEC limit. This work is part of the European ICT-BOOM project which aims at building a Tb/s photonic router using hybrid and heterogeneous integration on SOI substrates. The preliminary results reported here is the initial step before the final project demonstrator.