I-Corps: Holographic NxN Optical Switch for Data Communication

该团队正在开发一种基于加载到微光机电系统（MOMES）上的全息图案的光数据通信光开关。在光纤网络的节点处，并且越来越多地出现在大规模数据中心中，光开关动态地将一根光纤的输出光束重定向到另一根光纤的输入，从而在两点之间建立通信链路。目前的光开关技术（3D MOEMS）采用万向支架上的毫米尺寸反射镜阵列来将光束从一根光纤转向另一根光纤。部署这些光交换机的主要障碍是它们的成本、交换速度不足、端口数量不足和可靠性。在这个团队开发的开关中，光不是被反射，而是向预定义的方向衍射。这种衍射原理允许任何输入光纤端口与任何输出光纤端口互连，使开关真正无阻塞。这还允许更快的重新配置速度，比当前技术快约100倍，增强了对大量端口的鲁棒性和可扩展性。由于衍射技术的性质，所提出的开关具有比商业上可获得的替代品更低的功耗和每端口价格的附加好处。随着智能手机和平板电脑等移动的设备的引入，对新连接的需求急剧增加。云计算、视频会议、社交媒体、在线游戏和视频点播等应用依赖高带宽将内容从数据中心提供给最终用户。任何可以帮助增加可用带宽和降低成本的设备都有很大的机会在商业上取得成功。当前的交换机技术由于其速度、功耗和可扩展性的限制而不能充分匹配增长率。为了应对更快、更具成本效益的互联网的挑战，该团队展示了一种新型的光开关，其性能比目前最先进的技术快100倍。他们提出的系统还将提供更高的可靠性和可扩展性。

This team is developing an optical switch for optical data communication based on holographic patterns loaded onto Micro Opto Electro Mechanical Systems (MOMES). At the nodes of a fiber optic network, and increasingly appearing in massive data centers, optical switches dynamically redirect the output beam of one fiber to the input of another one, establishing a communication link between two points. The current technology for optical switches (3D MOEMS) employs an array of millimeter size mirrors on gimbal supports to steer the light beam from one fiber to another. The principal barriers to the deployment of these optical switches have been their cost, inadequate switching speeds, insufficient number of ports, and reliability. In the switch developed by this team, the light is not reflected but diffracted toward a predefined direction. This principle of diffraction allows the interconnection of any of the input fiber ports to any of the output fiber ports, making the switch truly non-blocking. This also allows for a faster reconfiguration speed, about 100 times faster than the current technology, enhanced robustness and scalability to a large number of ports. Due to the nature of the diffractive technology, the proposed switch has the added benefits of lower power consumption and price per port than commercially available alternatives.With the introduction of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs the need for new connections has increased dramatically. Applications such as cloud computing, videoconferencing, social media, online gaming, and video-on-demand rely on high bandwidth to provide content from the data center to the end user. Any device that can assist in increasing available bandwidth and lowering costs has a strong chance to be commercially successful. Current switch technology is not sufficiently matching the growth rate due to their speed, power consumption, and scalability limitations. In order to meet the challenge of a faster and more cost effective Internet, the team has demonstrated a new type of optical switch that can perform 100 times faster than the current state of the art technologies. The system they propose will also offer improved reliability and scalability.