Silica-based waveguide-type 16 x 16 optical switch module incorporating driving circuits

We developed a 16/spl times/16 optical matrix switch module in which we incorporated a silica-based thermooptic switch chip and driving circuits. The module exhibited excellent levels of performance, namely a low insertion loss and a high extinction ratio. This is the largest scale waveguide-type matrix switch module yet reported. Driving circuits with a serial-to-parallel control signal conversion function enabled us to realize a new module structure that is both simple and flexible for use with larger scale switches.