Proposed Optical Cross Connect using a Planar Arrangement of Beam Steerers

We propose a design for a strictly nonblocking N x N spatial optical cross connect that employs planar lightwave beam steerers. The beam steerers allow for a modular design without requiring two-dimensional chip-to-chip waveguide interconnections. The modular design and that the fact that the number of electrical leads scales as NlogN in turn allows the possibility of constructing very large, robust, solid-state cross connects. We also propose a cascaded beam-steerer design that substantially relaxes the phase shifter strength requirement.