May 2000 Meeting

First all-photonic MEMS cross-connect fabric carrying live traffic

The Optical Society of San Diego is pleased to present Dr. Anis Husain, founder, Chairman and CTO of Optical Micro-Machines (http://www.omminc.com), the first company to manufacture a photonic MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) switch for the optical telecom industry. With the explosion in internet traffic, the race to develop an all-optical fiber optic network has attracted large investments in technology by network equipment suppliers and venture capitalists. Husain founded OMM in 1997, and has obtained several rounds of venture capital funding, including a recent investment of $22M late last year. The company has grown from a few employees in early '99 to greater than 120 today. Business media coverage of the high stakes competition by Forbes, Fortune and the New York Times have all featured OMM. The San Diego Union-Tribune also recognized OMM's prospects in an article profiling five of the most promising new high tech companies in San Diego ("Waiting in the Wings," January 2, 2000 Union-Tribune).

OMM's photonic MEMS switches use movable microscopic mirrors to deflect light between arbitrary input and output channels. Their family of switches range from 4x4 up to 32x32 on a single chip. They have recently announced a new design that will enable scaling to larger port counts of greater than 2000x2000. The switches are low loss, low cross-talk, and have excellent return and polarization dispersion loss characteristics. They may be operated at any data rate, protocol and or wavelength. The switches have been tested over the last 6 months by half a dozen telecom equipment suppliers and have demonstrated very high reliability, durability and vibration tolerance. These switches have been carrying live traffic on the Supernet for the last few months and have been deployed in Siemens' TransXpress large optical cross-connect system for fast re-provisioning. This talk will present the basic MEMS cross-connect concept, performance and reliability data on the first "real" MEMS photonic switches and projections on the future of optical switching.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Anis Hussain is currently the Chairman, CTO & Senior Vice President for R&D at Optical Micro Machines (OMM), which he founded in July 1997. Before starting OMM, he held positions in both government and industrial research and development. From 1994-1998, he was Assistant Director at DARPA's Electronic Technology Office (ETO), where he was responsible for funding and managing R&D in electronics and opto-electronics with a budget of ~$400M/year. During his stay, ETO sponsored research resulted in more than 40 products, including Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers, GaN blue green emitters and serial and parallel Gbps optical interconnects.
  Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Husain managed Honeywell's Photonics Department and was instrumental in developing 3 opto-electronic based product families. Dr. Husain holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University College London.

 

May meeting review:
Dr. Anis Husain, "MEMS Cross Connect"
by Brian Catanzaro

The May OSSD Meeting featured a presentation by Dr. Anis Husain, CTO of OMM Incorporated. After a distinguished career at DARPA, Dr. Husain founded OMM in 1997. Dr. Husain discussed the optical switching technology pioneered by OMM.
Dr. Husain described a crossbar switched designed using state of the art MEMS technology. The switches use a series of movable mirrors to redirect signals between optical fibers. The mirrors are arranged in a matrix form so that N2 switches are used to interconnect N input channels with N output channels. The switches are packaged hermetically to protect the micromirrors and enable them to be used in a harsh environment.
The switch is based on micromirror technology. The technology leverages the semiconductor industry's success in mass producing structures in silicon using silicon wafers, photolithography, metal deposition, and wet and dry etching. The anisotropic etch properties of silicon are used to create cantilevered features that can function as optical surfaces. The optical surfaces (micromirrors) are controlled using electrostatic forces generated by structures patterned into the substrate. Opto-mechanical structures such as these have been demonstrated at OMM, UCLA, Texas Instruments, Lucent Labs, and Sandia National Labs.

The switches manufactured at OMM require some assembly operation. OMM has devoted a great deal of resources to automating the process of manufacturing, assembly, and test in order to reduce labor costs and increase the manufacturing throughput.

OMM has had its devices tested by all major telecommunications companies. Live telecommunications traffic is currently flowing through OMM switches in field tests in the Bay Area. OMM is anticipating large growth in the area of optical switching. Those interested in more information on OMM can access their web-site via http://www.omminc.com