Hollow waveguides for N/spl times/N optical cross connect switch

In this work we present a new structure based on the use of hollow dielectric waveguides as the guiding medium between the switch nodes (mirrors) for the N/spl times/N optical cross connect switch. The hollow waveguides are designed and fabricated by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) on SOI wafers. The optical performance, measured at the 1550 nm shows propagation loss lower than 0.08dB/mm, a polarization dependant loss PDL less than 0.15 dB and a wavelength dependant loss WDL less than 0.152 dB.