10-Gb/s/port gated divider passive combiner optical switch with single-mode-to-multimode combiner

A novel space-division optical switch configuration is proposed that incorporates a low-loss single-mode-to-multimode (SM-to-MM) combiner. We have confirmed the feasibility of a 16/spl times/16 10-Gb/s/port optical crossbar switch through an experiment with a silica waveguide combiner.