Loss compensated optical switching
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsMichael Renne Ty Tan, Sagi Varghese Mathai, Wayne Victor Sorin, Paul Kessler Rosenberg
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Loss compensated optical switching includes an optical crossbar switch and a wafer bonded semiconductor amplifier (SOA). The optical crossbar switch has a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports and is on a substrate of a first semiconductor material. The wafer bonded SOA includes a layer of second semiconductor material that is wafer bonded to a surface of the substrate such that a portion of the wafer bonded SOA semiconductor material layer overlies a portion of a port of the plurality of input ports. The second semiconductor material of the wafer bonded SOA is different from the first semiconductor material of the substrate.
Claims15
A loss compensated optical switch comprising:
- an optical crossbar switch having a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, the optical crossbar switch being on a substrate comprising a first semiconductor material;
- and
- a wafer bonded semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) optically coupled to a port of the optical crossbar switch to amplify an optical signal at the port,
- wherein the wafer bonded SOA comprises a layer of a second semiconductor material that is wafer bonded to a surface of the substrate such that a portion of the wafer bonded SOA semiconductor material layer overlies a portion of an optical waveguide of the port, the second semiconductor material being different from the first semiconductor material.
A loss compensated optical switching system comprising:
- an optical crossbar switch on a silicon semiconductor-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, the optical crossbar switch having N input ports and N output ports, where N is an integer greater than one;
- a plurality of N wafer bonded semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), each wafer bonded SOA of the plurality overlying and being optically coupled to a different one of the ports of the optical crossbar switch;
- and
- a controller to control the optical crossbar switch,
- wherein the wafer bonded SOAs comprise a layer of a semiconductor material that differs from silicon and that is wafer bonded to a surface of the silicon SOT substrate.
A method of loss compensated optical switching, the method comprising:
- amplifying an optical signal at a port of an optical crossbar switch using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), the optical crossbar switch comprising a first semiconductor material, the SOA comprising a layer of a second semiconductor material that is wafer bonded to a surface of the first semiconductor material, the first and second semiconductor materials being different;
- and
- switching the optical signal to one or more of a plurality of output ports using an optical crossbar switch, switching occurring one or both of before and after amplifying the optical signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.