Improved optical switching network configuration based on optical interconnection

This paper reported an improved optical switching network configuration based on optical interconnection technology with vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) array. The optical switching network consists of two-level optical interconnection backplane. It can connect 64 nodes with parallel optical links. The first level of optical interconnection backplane includes eight 8x8 crossbar interconnect sub-networks. Instead of one 8x8 crossbar interconnect sub-network in the second level of the optical interconnection backplane adopted in our original configuration, the second level of optical interconnection backplane has two 8x8 Crossbar interconnect sub-networks in this improved configuration. So the blocking rate is decreased. VCSEL-based parallel optoelectronic I/O interface is used as O/E conversion. Every I/O parallel interface between optical interconnection network and every node includes 18 VCSEL emitter pixels, 18 PIN receiver pixels. In order to couple 18 signal light beam array into optical fiber array ribbon, a fabrication technique based on the high precise position slot is used for assembling optical fiber array interface. A configuration of coupling packaging for the VCSEL pixel array to the fiber array with 45degrees end surface is also presented in this paper. An optical data transmission rate between interconnection nodes is 5Gb/s which is transmitted by the optical fiber ribbon-based parallel optical data links with 2 channels at data rate of 2.5Gb/s per channel. The aggregate bandwidth of 360Gbps for an 8x8 Crossbar optical fiber interconnect network backplane is achieved. The reliability of the fiber array with 45degrees end surface is tested in our experiment.