Mach-Zehnder-based five-port silicon router for optical interconnects

We propose and fabricate a five-port silicon optical router based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer switches. Only 10 switching elements and five low-loss waveguide crossings are required in our design. Through thermal control of the switching network, we successfully demonstrate 20 possible I/O paths of the five-port optical router at a data transmission rate of 32 Gb/s. The results here show great potential for application in ultrahigh-capacity optical interconnects.