Scalable Broadband Switching Matrix for Telecom Payload Based on a Novel SWGs-Based MZI

Photonics is a disruptive technology also for enabling telecommunication payloads to achieve high performance and potentially low costs. In this paper, we propose the design of a scalable switching cell that consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), based on a subwavelength grating (SWG) coupler and a thermo-optical phase shifter. The scalability of the device was demonstrated by evaluating the performance of a 4 × 4 dilated strictly non-blocking Banyan network. Worst-case insertion loss (IL) of 9 dB, crosstalk (XT) of −34 dB and extinction ratio (ER) of 42 dB have been theoretically proved, as well as power consumption of 46 mW and time response of 9.2 µs, within a footprint of 1080 µm × 288 µm.