This technology is a method for fast, low-cost calibration of chip integrated optical switching fabrics without built-in power monitors to improve scalability and facilitate the broader implementation of optical switching fabrics.
Current electronic switching speeds are inferior to the speeds that can be obtained using optical switch fabrics and are unable to keep up with the increasing demand for greater bandwidth capacity and faster data transfer. Current methods for device calibration using optical switch fabrics often use built-in power monitors to accelerate the process. However, this approach increases the complexity, cost, and insertion loss of the device while also decreasing the yield. As a result, there are currently no available methods device calibration using optical switch fabrics that address these limitations and allow for scalability.
This technology uses a series of algorithms that significantly reduce the complexity of the switch fabric design to enable fully automated calibration without the use of a built-in power monitor. This method is compatible with most multi-stage switching fabrics constructed with 2X2 switching elements such as Beneš, dilated Beneš, Banyan, Omega, Baseline, n-cube, and their variants. As a result, this technology significantly reduces the cost and complexity of both photonic integrated circuits and their packages in terms of reduced number of optical components, electrical pins, and improved insertion loss.
This technology has been validated on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer 4X4 silicon Beneš device.
Patent Pending
IR CU17325
Licensing Contact: Greg Maskel