Micromechanical Optical Crossconnect with 4f Relay Imaging Optics

We describe a novel optical configuration for a MEMS-based beam steering optical crossconnect. It incorporates 4-f-imaging optics, to relay light to the MEMS chip. This makes the system more tolerant to fiber microlens misalignment. The use of a relay plus Fourier lens and patterned mirror removes the skew angle on the MEMS array and reduces the maximum angle for the MEMS mirror. A prototype 110x110, crossconnect, employing the imaging optics was constructed to validate the approach. This achieved a mean fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 3.0dB.