DIRECTIONLESS RECONFIGURABLE OPTICAL ADD/DROP MULTIPLEXER
First Claim
1. An optical switching system for switching optical signals between N first ports and M second ports comprising:
- N number of 1 ×
Y optical splitters, each optical splitter providing one of the N first ports; and
M number of Z×
1 optical switches, each optical switch optically connected to at least one optical splitter and providing one of the M second ports,wherein Y is any natural number and Z is any natural number.
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Abstract
An optical switch system for dropping a ROADM node is presented. The switch system includes an N×M structure having two layers. A first layer includes optical splitters, each splitter receiving a multiplexed input signal and outputting a first multiplexed output signal. A second layer includes switches receiving the first multiplexed output signals from the optical splitters and generating a second multiplexed output signal. The second multiplexed output signal is typically one of the first multiplexed output signals. An optional third layer, which includes optical filters, receives the second multiplexed output signal from the switches and produces a non-multiplexed, single-wavelength output signal.
46 Citations
33 Claims
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1. An optical switching system for switching optical signals between N first ports and M second ports comprising:
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N number of 1 ×
Y optical splitters, each optical splitter providing one of the N first ports; andM number of Z×
1 optical switches, each optical switch optically connected to at least one optical splitter and providing one of the M second ports,wherein Y is any natural number and Z is any natural number. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)
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24. A K×
- (N×
M) optical switching system, comprising;K number of 1 ×
X optical splitters, where X is any natural number;N number of 1 ×
Y optical splitters, where Y is any natural number; andM number of Z×
1 optical switches, where Z is any natural number, wherein each of the 1×
Y optical splitters is optically connected to a different channel X of the 1 ×
X optical splitters, and each of the Z channels of each optical switch is optically connected to different 1 ×
Y optical splitter. - View Dependent Claims (25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31)
- (N×
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32. A method of dropping optical signals comprising:
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receiving an input multiplexed signal having a set of wavelengths into a 1 ×
Y optical splitter;splitting the input multiplexed signal into a number Y of output multiplexed signals, each output multiplexed signals having the same set of wavelengths as the input multiplex signal; sending each of the Y output multiplexed signals into a different one of a plurality of Z×
1 optical switches;selecting one of the Y output multiplexed signals at the Z×
1 optical switch; andoutputting the selected output multiplexed signal.
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33. A method of adding optical signals comprising:
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receiving 2 or more optical input signals each at a separate optical switch, each optical input signal having a set of one or more wavelengths; outputting each optical input signal from the optical switches to an optical splitters; and combining in the optical splitter the optical input signals received from each of the optical switches into a single multiplexed signal containing the sets of wavelengths provided by the optical input signals.
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Specification