Space switching enabled tunable wavelength converter and its application in large scale optical interconnect architecture

Abstract We propose a large scale Clos structure based optical interconnect by employing cyclic arrayed waveguide grating routers (AWGRs) and novel space switching enabled tunable wavelength converters (SS-TWCs). The 1:2 or 1:4 SS-TWCs expand the scale of the optical interconnect up to 8 times of standard Clos structure while using the same AWGR modules. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed optical interconnect.