Proposed optical cross connect using a planar arrangement of beam steerers

We propose a design for a strict-sense 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 the fact that the number of electrical leads scales as N log N in turn allows the possibility of constructing large, robust, solid-state cross connects. We also propose a cascaded beam-steerer design that substantially relaxes the phase shifter strength requirement.