Background
With the rapid development of information services such as big data, cloud computing, internet of things, 5G and the like, the traditional electronic exchange technology cannot meet the requirement of network bandwidth development. The optical switching technology, which is an optical switching technology for realizing information interaction in an optical domain, has the advantages of high speed, broadband and low power consumption, and is a key technology for realizing a future high-capacity data switching all-optical network. As a core device of an optical switching technology, an optical switch realizes the rapid switching of optical signals. At present, an optical switch realized based on a discrete device has problems in the aspects of insertion loss, volume, power consumption, reliability and the like, does not have the prospect of practical application, and particularly cannot meet the technical requirements of a large-scale optical switch array. With the vigorous development of modern integrated photonic technology, the optical switch chip is realized by using a high-precision photonic integration process, so that the volume, the power consumption and the preparation cost of the switch can be obviously reduced. Furthermore, as a basic functional unit in the optical switch array, the performance index of the optical switch, including the operating bandwidth, power consumption and size, directly determines the performance of the entire switch array. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop an optical switch unit with large bandwidth, low power consumption and compact structure.
In recent years, research teams at home and abroad carry out deep research on the structure and the performance of the optical switch. IBM Joris Van Campenhout et al published a paper "Low-power, 2X 2silicon electro-optical switch with 110-nm band width for broadband and receiving optical networks" on OPTICS EXPRESS (Vol.17, No.26) in 2009, and proposed a Mach-Zehnder optical switch using two ultra-wideband 3dB directional couplers such that the bandwidth of the spectrum is 110nm, the power consumption is about 3mW, and the device size is 50X 4002(0.022) The crosstalk is less than-17 dB. The photonic network research center Yuya Shoji et al of the national institute of Industrial and technology integration, published in 2010 on OPTIC EXPRESS (Vol.17, No.9) by "Low-cross 2 × 2 thermo-optical switch with silicon wires waveguides", an optical switch based on a 2 × 2 Mach-Zehnder interferometer array, and a method for cascading four switch units by using the sameThe direct-state crosstalk and cross-state crosstalk of the optical switch are lower than-30 dB and-16 dB within the spectral bandwidth of 100nm, wherein the size of each Mach-Zehnder switch unit is 200 multiplied by 2002The total length of the whole device is 700 μm, and the total power consumption of the device is 160 mW. Nicol-s Sherwood-Droz et al, Connell university, published a paper "Optical 4x4 high loss silicon router for Optical Networks-on-chip (NoC)" in Optics EXPRESS (Vol.16, No.20) in 2008, and proposed a non-blocking 4x4 router for on-chip Optical Networks, the device totally comprising 8 micro-ring resonators, each switch unit being composed of a micro-ring and two perpendicular waveguides, and capable of realizing simultaneous transmission and reception of data at each port, and the size of the device being 0.072The 3dB operating bandwidth is 38 GHz. When the power consumption is lower than 2mW, the extinction ratio is 17 dB; at a power consumption of 6.5mW, the extinction ratio is higher than 21 dB. Andrew W.Poon et al, Connell university, published in 2009 On Proceedings of IEEE (Vol.97, No.7) by "shielded Microresonator-Based Matrix Switch for Silicon On-Chip Optical Interconnection", proposes a switching cell consisting of a square micro-ring and two vertical waveguides, with an operating bandwidth of 0.45nm and a power consumption of 0.61 mW.
As described above, the optical switch based on the mach-zehnder interference type has a large operating bandwidth, but the optical switch device has a large size and large power consumption required for switching the operating state, which is disadvantageous for large-scale integration of the switch array. The optical switch device based on the micro-ring resonance structure is small in size and low in power consumption, but the working bandwidth is far smaller than that of a Mach-Zehnder optical switch. Therefore, it is important to develop an optical switch with wide operating bandwidth, compact structure and low power consumption.
Disclosure of Invention
In view of this, the present invention provides a mach-zehnder broadband low-power-consumption optical switch based on multi-stage microdisk coupling, which has the characteristics of wide operating bandwidth, compact structure and low power consumption.
A mach-zehnder optical switch comprising:
a first input waveguide and a second input waveguide for inputting optical signals;
a first output waveguide and a second output waveguide for outputting optical signals;
the front coupler is used for equally dividing the optical signals introduced from the first input waveguide or the second input waveguide and respectively introducing the equally divided optical signals into the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm;
the rear coupler is used for combining two paths of optical signals output from the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm into one path of optical signal;
the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm respectively comprise a coupling waveguide and a group of resonators; each group of resonators comprises at least 2 microdisk resonators; the resonators are arranged near the coupling waveguide, and form a cascade resonator through the coupling effect of the coupling waveguide.
Preferably, the coupling waveguide is s-shaped, and the microdisc resonator is disposed in the recessed region of the s-shape.
Preferably, the refractive index of the microdisc resonator is controlled by using an ion dispersion effect.
Preferably, the refractive index of the microdisc resonator is controlled by using a thermo-optic effect.
Preferably, the refractive index of the microdisc resonator is controlled by an optical nonlinear effect.
Preferably, each group of resonators includes 5 microdisc resonators.
The invention has the following beneficial effects:
the resonance wavelength of each microdisc resonator is respectively adjusted by cascading a plurality of microdisc resonators, so that the resonance wavelengths of the microdisc resonators are close to each other and combined, the frequency spectrum response bandwidth is effectively improved, and the working bandwidth of the optical switch is improved. The phase difference of optical signals transmitted by the two interference arms is pi by adjusting the refractive index of the microdisc resonator coupled with the two interference arms, so that the direct-on state of the optical switch is realized; the phase difference of the optical signals transmitted by the two interference arms is 0, and the cross state of the optical switch is realized. Compared with an optical switch formed by a Mach-Zehnder or microring resonator, the microdisc resonator has the obvious advantage of smaller size due to only one outer side surface, can obviously reduce the power consumption of the optical switch, and has a more compact structure.
Detailed Description
The invention is described in detail below by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings.
As shown in fig. 1, a mach-zehnder broadband low-power-consumption optical switch based on multi-stage microdisk coupling includes:
a pair of input waveguides for inputting optical signals.
And a pair of output waveguides for outputting the optical signals.
And a pre-coupler for dividing the optical signal guided from the input wave and introducing the divided optical signal into the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm, respectively.
And the rear coupler is used for combining the two optical signals output by the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm into one optical signal.
And the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm are equal in length, connected between the front coupler and the rear coupler and used for transmitting the optical signal output from the front coupler to the rear coupler.
And the two groups of resonators are respectively coupled with the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm and are used for adjusting the phase of the optical signal transmitted in the interference arms. Each group of resonators consists of multiple microdisc resonators with sufficient spacing between adjacent microdisc resonators to avoid coupling. The coupling length of the microdisk and the interference arm waveguide is increased by utilizing the bent waveguide (s-shaped) in the interference arm, so that each group of microdisk resonators can work in an over-coupling state, the process difficulty caused by too small coupling distance between the microdisk and the interference arm is reduced, and the switch structure is more compact.
By controlling the two groups of microdisc resonators or only one group of microdisc resonators, the refractive index of the microdisc resonators can be regulated and controlled by utilizing the plasma dispersion effect, the thermo-optic effect or the optical nonlinear effect. The effective refractive index of the microdisc resonator is changed, so that the optical path of the optical signal in the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm is changed, and the phase of the optical signal is adjusted.
Example (b):
the input waveguide 1 and the input waveguide 2 are used for inputting optical signals.
An output waveguide 7 and an output waveguide 8 for outputting optical signals.
And a pre-coupler 3 for dividing the optical signal introduced from the input waveguide 1 or 2 and introducing the divided optical signal into the upper interference arm 4 and the lower interference arm 5, respectively.
And the rear coupler 6 is used for combining the two optical signals output from the upper interference arm 4 and the lower interference arm 5 into one optical signal.
And the upper interference arm 4 and the lower interference arm 5 are equal in length, connected between the front coupler 3 and the rear coupler 6, and used for transmitting the optical signal output from the front coupler 3 to the rear coupler 6.
And the two groups of resonators are respectively coupled with the upper interference arm 4 and the lower interference arm 5 and are used for adjusting the phase of an optical signal in the interference arms, and each group of resonators is formed by cascading 5 microdisc resonators.
The optical switch adopts silicon-on-insulator material, and the front coupler 3 and the rear coupler 6 adopt 2 x 2 multi-mode interference couplers. Both the microdisc resonators (41, 42, 43, 44, 45) coupled to the upper interference arm 4 and the microdisc resonators (51, 52, 53, 54, 55) coupled to the lower interference arm 5 are formed with metal resistors, and the resonance wavelength of the microdisc resonators is adjusted by changing the refractive index of the microdisc resonators by the thermo-optical effect, thereby realizing switching of the operating state of the optical switch.
After the optical signal passes through the single microdisc resonator, the frequency response of the signal can be expressed as:
where a represents the loss factor of a turn of optical signal propagating in the resonator, r represents the through factor of the microdisk coupled to the interference arm, phinRepresenting a one-pass phase shift of the optical signal through the nth microdisc resonator, n being 1,2,3,4, 5. The microdisc resonators (41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) and the interference arms (4, 5) are designed in an overcoupled state, i.e. r<a。
The effective phase through a single microdisc resonator can be expressed as
For an optical signal introduced by an input waveguide, after being uniformly split by the pre-coupler 3, the total frequency response output by the waveguide arm can be expressed as follows through the modulation of the interference waveguide arm and a group of cascaded microdisc resonators:
Ht=H1(w)·H2(W)·H3(w)·H4(w)·H5(w)
the total phase shift can be expressed as:
wherein
Is the occurring phase shift through the waveguide arm.
By cascading microdisk harmonics of one of the groupsWhen the resonators (51, 52, 53, 54, 55) perform thermo-optical modulation to change the refractive index Δ n of each microdisk, the two optical signals passing through the
upper interference arm 4 and the
lower interference arm 5 have a certain phase difference, and the phase difference is determined by the phase difference
Become into
When the optical switch is in the on state, the working state of the optical switch is converted from the cross state to the direct state.
Assuming that the radius of the microdisc is 5 μm, the loss factor is 0.9989, and the through coupling coefficient of the microdisc and the interference arm is 0.75, the microdisc resonator (51, 52, 53, 54, 55) is heated, and when Δ n is 0.00135, the phase changes to pi.
Fig. 3 represents a phase response diagram of an optical signal after passing through two interference arms in a case where a set of cascaded microdisk (51, 52, 53, 54, 55) has a refractive index change Δ n of 0.00135, wherein the phase response of the optical signal output by the lower interference arm 5 is shifted such that it is shifted at a wavelength λ01557.3, the two optical signals have a phase difference of pi.
Fig. 4 represents the spectral response of the through terminal and the cross terminal of the optical switch, at this time, the spectral response of the cross terminal is 0, the optical signal is output at the through terminal, and since the loss of the microdisc resonator exists, the intensity of the output signal at the through terminal is not 1, and it can be seen that the 3dB operating bandwidth of the optical switch is about 5.86 nm.
Fig. 5 represents the spectral response of the optical switch between the through terminal and the cross terminal in the off state before the thermo-optical effect is adjusted, and at this time, the phase of the optical signal passing through the upper and lower interference arms is the same, i.e. the phase difference is 0, so the light intensity of the through terminal is 0, and the output signal intensity of the cross terminal is not 1 due to the loss of the microdisc resonator.
Fig. 6 represents the spectral response of the through end and the cross end of the optical switch when the upper interference arm and the lower interference arm have only one microdisk resonator, the radius of the microdisk is 5 μm, the loss factor is 0.9989, the through coupling coefficient of the microdisk and the interference arm is 0.75, and the microdisk coupled with the lower interference arm is also adjusted by using the thermo-optical effect, so that it can be seen that the 3dB operating bandwidth of the optical switch is only about 3.4 nm.
In summary, the above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. Any modification, equivalent replacement, or improvement made within the spirit and principle of the present invention should be included in the protection scope of the present invention.