Integrated Silicon Photonic Switch Demonstrates Lowest Signal Loss Ever in High-Speed Data Transmission

Experimental photonic switches developed at UC Berkeley have shown promise toward the goal of fully optical, high-capacity switching for future high-speed data transmission networks. The switch developed and tested for this research demonstrated capabilities not seen before in photonic switches. Key to this success, is the scale-up of a 240 × 240 integrated silicon photonic switch. The device is so-named because it accepts 240 optical communication input channels and sends them into 240 output channels.