$8\times16$ Wavelength Selective Switch With Full Contentionless Switching

An 8 × 16 wavelength selective switch (WSS) with full contentionless switching is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Utilizing two chips of liquid crystal on silicon, the optical wavelengths can be switched, attenuated, or blocked among 8 input ports and 16 output ports. The maximum insertion loss is less than 14 dB; the bandwidth tuning range is from 50 to 5000 GHz. The attenuation range is from 0 to 15 dB, and the optical blocking value is greater than 27 dB. Compared with the previous reports, the 8 × 16 WSS proposed in this letter is a truly contentionless WSS device with the highest number of input and output ports.