Abstract

An innovative acousto-optic interconnection device is proposed that eliminates optical fan-out and fan-in losses suffered by other optical interconnection techniques. This approach allows essentially lossless permutations of about 30 single-mode fiber optic signals in a single integrated optics device, and supports arbitrary modulation formats and bandwidths since optical to electronic conversions are avoided. The reconfiguration time of this acousto-optic interconnection network is given by the aperture time of the Bragg cell and is usually between 100 ns and 10 µs, which is fast enough for many applications. Surface acoustic wave acousto-optic technology can be efficiently utilized for the space division switching applications with three key advantages. First, almost lossless permutations can be obtained because fanout and fanin losses are avoided. Second, even though N frequencies must be simultaneously applied to the device, an incredibly low rf drive power is required due to a sophisticated utilization of beam steering and phase matching techniques. Finally, an entire switch network is realized on a single integrated optics substrate, and these can be stacked up and combined to implement a novel 3-dimensional folding of a larger Clos network. The design, analysis, applications, and initial experimental verification of the acousto-optic photonic switch concept will be presented.

© 1990 Optical Society of America