Five-Port Optical Router Based on Silicon Microring Optical Switches for Photonic Networks-on-Chip

We demonstrate a five-port optical router composed of eight silicon microring optical switches tuned by thermooptic effect. The optical signal-to-noise ratio of the device on the tested routing states is over 11 dB at the working wavelength. 32-Gb/s data transmission has been performed on its 20 optical links, and eight-channel wavelength division multiplexing data transmission in the wavelength range from 1525 to 1565 nm has been implemented to expand its communication capacity. The average energy efficiency of the optical router is 68.2 fJ/bit, and its response time is similar to 20 mu s.