IMPROVEMENT OF SWITCHING SPEED IN ACOUSTOOPTIC SWITCHES FOR MULTIPLE OPTICAL WAVELENGTH USING GIGAHERTZ SURFACE ACOUSTIC-WAVES

Collinear acoustooptic (AO) devices have unique wavelength-selective s witching characteristics and are applicable to wavelength-division-mul tiplexing photonic switching systems. However, conventional AO devices require a switching time of a ew mu s. In this paper an improvement o f the optical switching speed is discussed. In order to increase the s witching rise-time to less than a few hundred ns, gigahertz surface ac oustic waves (SAWs) are used to induce mode conversion with a short AO interaction length. The optical switching characteristics of the prop osed device are theoretically discussed. Crosstalk between wavelength channels, which is accompanied by switching, is also discussed.