Optical switch pushes fibre to the door
A new technology from Xerox Corporation could help eliminate data bottlenecks by bringing high-capacity fibreoptics directly to every home and business in the not too distant future.
Xerox breaks the current bandwidth barriers by integrating an optical MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) photonic switch with planar light circuits on to a single silicon chip small enough to fit on a fingertip. The new switch promises to deliver optical services by providing the functionality of a Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (R-OADM), a routing device that is in common use today but is traditionally 10 to 100 times larger and more costly. The Xerox switch compresses the entire R-OADM into a 20 by 15 mm component that can direct enormous amounts of data in ways that currently require large racks of assembled equipment.
In contrast with existing optical networking equipment that must interface between the optical to the electronic domain, the company's technology enables switching in the all-optical domain. Because it controls the flow of light rather than the flow of electrons, it can be made faster, smaller and cheaper.
Using optical waveguides (very small conductors of light) about 5 to 6 microns thick, the MEMS waveguide shuttle acts like a miniature train track switch for the fine waveguides, avoiding the problems of earlier, mirror-based MEMS switches.
The MEMS switches and waveguides are integrated together on a single crystal silicon wafer using a common semiconductor process. Xerox claims this avoids the complex alignment issues associated with manually connecting larger components to optical fibres, and avoids the cost and space associated with manufacturing, assembling and packaging the separate components of add/drop multiplexers.
"Optical networks based on this technology could go beyond delivering on demand DVD quality videos to homes," says Joel Kubby, technical manager at Xerox's Wilson Center for Research and Technology
"The switch could help usher in a new era of Internet applications that change the way we do business, seek information and find entertainment."
Xerox went on to add that it expects the switch to form the basis of new, home installed telecommunications systems that will deliver ultra-wide bandwidths, but avoid the prohibitive costs often faced by smaller customers requiring high speed data connections.
22-Apr-2003