Abstract

A C/L-band 2-port broadband wavelength multiplexing switch is proposed and experimentally demonstrated using thermally tuned polymer waveguides. The device consists of two 1 × 2 multimode interference (MMI) switches at the input side, a 2 × 1 Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) as wavelength combiner, and a 3 × 2 MMI switch at the output side. The MMI switches are wavelength independent and the MZI shows flat-top response. Any two wavelength channels from the C- and L-band can be path-switched, either separated or combined, to either of the two outputs. The device is polarization independent, the excess loss is below 2.3 dB, the crosstalk is below −20 dB, and the maximal total heater power is 173.5 mW. The device can also be cascaded to construct a larger network of wavelength multiplexing switches. We believe this work provides a low-cost and efficient solution for the multi-band optical networks by allowing dynamic control of the resources among different bands, thereby greatly improving the network flexibility.

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