High-Capacity Multi-Stage Operation of Polarization-Diversity Silicon Photonics 8 × 8 Optical Switch

For practical and wide use of optical switches, cascadability and high throughput are of great significance. We demonstrate up to 8-stage cascaded operation of a polarization-independent silicon photonics 8 × 8 optical switch where 11-channel 32/44-Gbaud DP-16QAM signals are loaded up on all the paths in a cyclic way. The results verify that the 8 × 8 switch is capable of offering a throughput of ...