160Gb/s Serial Line Rates in a Monolithic Optoelectronic Multistage Interconnection Network

We demonstrate very high line rate serial 160 Gb/s data transmission through a semiconductor optical amplifier based multistage switching matrix. This represents both the leading edge in monolithic switching circuit complexity and the highest reported line rates through monolithically cascaded switching networks. Bit error rate studies are performed to show only modest levels of signal degradation. Power penalties of order 0.6 dB and 1.2 dB are observed for two stages and four stages respectively in the monolithic circuits at 160 Gb/s per path.