Volume 19, Issue 2 2400427
Research Article

Broadband and Reconfigurable Dual-Mode Optical Switch with Low Power-Consumption

Shijie Sun

Shijie Sun

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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Shangrong Li

Shangrong Li

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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Yuanhua Che

Yuanhua Che

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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Tianhang Lian

Tianhang Lian

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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Yushu Fu

Yushu Fu

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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Xibin Wang

Corresponding Author

Xibin Wang

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

E-mail: [email protected]

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Daming Zhang

Daming Zhang

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012 China

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First published: 05 September 2024

Abstract

Mode-division multiplexing (MDM) technology, as a new way to increase the communication capacity of a single wavelength carrier, has attracted increasing attention. As a fundamental building block for MDM communication systems, multimode optical switch is playing an important role for routing the increasingly complex network. However, it is still very challenging to achieve a multimode optical switch with high flexibility and low power-consumption in a large bandwidth. Here, a 1 × 2 dual-mode optical switch is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, where the E11 and E21 modes can be switched output from either of the two output ports simultaneously or individually with low power-consumption. For the proposed dual-mode optical switch, three asymmetric Y-junctions are used as mode (de)multiplexers, two Mach–Zehnder interferometers form a single-mode switch matrix, and a 2 × 2 multimode interferometer is used as the waveguide crossing. The device is fabricated with simple photolithography and wet-etching methods. The measurement results show that the driving powers of the device are lower than 8.4 mW, and the crosstalks are less than −12.4 dB in the wavelength range of 1500–1600 nm. By implementing the dynamic control of resources between the guided modes, the proposed device can greatly improve the flexibility and efficiency of reconfigurable MDM networks.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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