This paper presents a fast and large-scale optical circuit-switch architecture for intra-datacenter applications that uses a combination of space switches and wavelength-routing switches are utilized. A 1,440 × 1,440 optical switch is designed with a fast-tunable laser, 8×8 delivery-and-coupling switch, and a 180×180 wavelength-routing switch. We test the bit-error-ratio characteristics of all ports of the wavelength-routing switch using 180-wavelength 10-Gbps signals in the full C-band. The worst switching time, 498 microseconds, is confirmed and all bit-error ratios are acceptable.

Frequency chirping induced in an electorabsorption (EA) modulator can degrade transmission performance because of the chromatic dispersion of fiber. This letter studies the frequency chirping in an EA modulator from the viewpoint of the influence of the modulation bandwidth. Both simulations and experiments, in which fiber transmission was carried out applying modulation signals of different bandwidths to an EA modulator, show that a large bandwidth causes small degradation in the transmission performance. This result is attributed to the short chirping time that occurs when a large bandwidth signal is applied.