A micromachined 4-port optical switch with no propagation length difference for add drop modules

We demonstrate a micromachined 4-port optical switch with 4 moving micromirrors. It features no propagation length difference and requires no collimators or planar lightwave circuits for low insertion loss. The optical performances were evaluated using 8 optical fibers (4 input-output pairs) of thermally expanded core (TEC) fibers.