H4 Integrated Acoustooptic Space Switch Modules With Applications To Multiport Optical Switching and Communications

All integrated electrooptic (EO) switch matrices reported heretofore are configured in stages (or tandem), and require a large number of basic cross-point switches as the size of the switch matrix or the number of input and output ports increases. As a result, the real estate of the substrate and the optical propagation losses and crosstalks as well as the complexity in both electrode layouts and electronic driver circuits greatly increase with the size of the switch matrix. Furthermore, both the optical insertion loss and the crosstalks vary widely with the route the light takes. Optical space switches that utilize guided-wave acoustooptic (AO) Bragg diffraction can significantly alleviate the undesirable characteristics referred to above. In this paper the most recent advances on the integrated AO space switch modules that utilize guided-wave AO Bragg diffraction in LiNbO_3[1] and their applications to multiport switching and dense WDM fiber optic systems are presented.