Strict non-blocking four-port optical router for mesh photonic network-on-chip

Abstract We report a strict non-blocking four-port optical router that is used for a mesh photonic network-on-chip on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The router consists of eight silicon microring switches that are tuned by the thermo-optic effect. For each tested rousting state, the signal-to-noise ratio of the optical router is larger than 13.8 dB at the working wavelength. The routing functionality of the device is verified. We perform 40 Gbps nonreturn to zero code data transmission on its 12 optical links. Meanwhile, data transmission using wavelength division multiplexing on eight channels in the C band (from 1525 to 1565 nm) has been adopted to increase the communication capacity. The optical router’s average energy efficiency is 25.52 fJ/bit. The rising times (10% to 90%) of the eight optical switch elements are less than 10 µ s and the falling times (90%–10%) are less than 20 µ s.