A Universal Method for Constructing N-Port Reconfigurable Non-Blocking Optical Switches on a Silicon Chip

We propose a novel method for building N-port nonblocking optical switches on a silicon chip. The rationale behind this is a bidirectional merge-replace-mirror method. It offers nonblocking interconnections among multiple inputs and outputs. The critical merits include 170 mu m x 300 mu m footprint, nano-second circuit-switching, and 85.1 mu W power consumption per link. The worst-case on-chip insertion loss for the 32-port optical switch is 18.02dB (all cross) and crosstalk is -16.96dB (all bars), respectively.