Performance of two 4*4 guided-wave photonic switching systems

Data from two photonic switching systems are presented, the first is a 4*4 crossbar, and the second is a 4*4 passive splitter/active combiner broadcast switch. The 4*4 crossbar has operated continuously and reliably for 18 months with no noticeable performance degradation. The 4*4 passive splitter/active combiner has operated for six months and yields excellent bit-error-rate (BER) performance at 1.7 Gb/s, showing that the influence of optical crosstalk in a small guided-wave optical switching system does not significantly affect the BER.<
>