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Abstract

Photonic data routing in optical networks is expected overcome the limitations of electronic routers with respect to data rate, latency, and energy consumption. However photonics-based routers suffer from dynamic power consumption, and non-simultaneous usage of multiple wavelength channels when microrings are deployed and are sizable in footprint. Here we show a design for the first hybrid photonic-plasmonic, non-blocking, broadband 5×5 router based on 3-waveguide silicon photonic-plasmonic 2×2 switches. The compactness of the router (footprint <200 μm²) results in a short optical propagation delay (0.4 ps) enabling high data capacity up to 2 Tbps. The router has an average energy consumption ranging from 0.1˜1.0 fJ/bit depending on either DWDM or CDWM operation, enabled by the low electrical capacitance of the switch. The total average routing insertion loss of 2.5 dB is supported via an optical mode hybridization deployed inside the 2×2 switches, which minimizes the coupling losses between the photonic and plasmonic sections of the router. The router's spectral bandwidth resides in the S, C and L bands and exceeds 100 nm supporting WDM applications since no resonance feature are required. Moreover, this hybrid photonic-plasmonic switch design is also suitable for 3 up to a few dozens of routing ports by simply cascading our 2×2 switch with a specific pattern. Taken together this novel optical router combines multiple design features, all required in next generation high data-throughput optical networks and computing systems.

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