Polarization diversity photonic switch testing

Publication:

Yang, H., Cheng, Q., Chen, R., Bergman, K. Polarization-Diversity Microring-Based Optical Switch Fabric in a Switch-and-Select Architecture. In 2020 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC) .IEEE.

Testing is another important aspect for a photonic engineer. In real fabrication, there is always unavoidable error due to the precision of manufacture machines, thus the performance can be different even if you have an excellent, perfect design. Testing asks for the understanding of the device working principle and also the ability to use various laboratory equipments such as Oscilloscope, Optical Spectrum Analyzer (OSA), BER Tester (BERT), microscopes and so forth. One of the most challenging steps in testing is alignment. This step asks for a lot of experiences to judge how the coupling goes and how to adjust to make a better alignment.

Here I show an example of testing of an AIM chip, which is a polarization diversity photonic switch.