203 results about "Optical cross-connect" patented technology

An optical coupling device including: at least a first input port for delivering an optical input signal beam that includes a plurality of wavelength channels; at least a first optical output port for receiving an optical output signal beam; a wavelength dispersion element for spatially separating the plurality of wavelength channels in the optical input signal beam to form a plurality of spatially separated wavelength channel beams; an optical coupling device for independently modifying the phase of each of the spatially separated wavelength channel beams such that, for at least one wavelength channel beam, a selected fraction of the light is coupled to the first output port and a fraction of the light is coupled away from the first output port.

A label switching routing protocol for establishing a datapath as a sequence of locally unique labels in an optical communications network, is provided. A wavelength on an optical cross-connect is considered as a label, or one portion of a label. Timeslots may be assigned to designated wavelengths so as to form the second portion of a composite label. An optical/time cross-connect (OTXC) capable of wavelength conversion from an input to an output interface creates the datapath based on wavelength to wavelength substitution, under the control of a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) protocol.

An optical cross-connect switch comprises a base (216), a flap (211) and one or more electrically conductive landing pads (222) connected to the flap (211). The flap (211) has a bottom portion that is movably coupled to the base (216) such that the flap (211) is movable with respect to a plane of the base (216) from a first orientation to a second orientation. The one or more landing pads (222) are electrically isolated from the flap (211) and electrically coupled to be equipotential with a landing surface.

The present invention relates to an optical cross connect unit comprising M wavelength separating sections for receiving multiplexed optical signals each having N kinds of wavelengths different from each other through M optical fibers, respectively, and for wavelength-separating each of the multiplexed optical signals into N optical signals, M optical reproduction relay sections each for conducting an optical reproduction and relay in a manner of making a conversion of each of the N optical signals, wavelength-separated in each of the wavelength separating sections, into an electric signal and then modulating it with a desired optical wavelength, a refill section for mutually refilling M sets of optical signals optically reproduced and relayed in the optical reproduction relay sections, a focusing section for focusing the M sets of optical signals refilled in the refill section, and a light source unit for supplying input lights having desired wavelengths to be modulated in the M optical reproduction relay sections. The light source unit includes N light sources for outputting lights having the N kinds of optical wavelengths, a multiplexing and branching section for multiplexing the lights from the N light sources to produce a multiplexed light having N kinds of optical wavelength components and further for branching the multiplexed light into MxN lights to output them as multiplexed and distributed lights, M wavelength filter sections for distributively receiving N multiplexed and distributed lights of the MxN multiplexed and distributed lights branched in the multiplexing and branching section to output N lights due to the passage of only arbitrary wavelengths of the N kinds of optical wavelengths, and a wavelength setting control section for setting optical wavelengths, which pass through the wavelength filter sections, so that they differ from each other. The N lights from each of the M wavelength filter sections are supplied as the input lights. In the case that many light sources are necessary for the modulation processing by modulators or the like, this optical cross connect unit is also suitable because of using given wavelengths from a small number of light sources for a lot of modulation processing.

In an optical cross connect apparatus, an optical multiplexing/distributing section wavelength-multiplexes optical signals of wavelengths after routing by an optical input switch section and distributively outputs the resultant multiplexed optical signal as input optical signals to an optical output switch section. In addition, an optical wavelength selecting section conducts wavelength selection processing so that, of the resultant multiplexed optical signal, an optical signal of a desired wavelength is outputted to an output port. With this configuration, it is possible to economically offer an optical cross connect apparatus having an excellent extensibility on a change (particularly, an increase) of the number of wavelengths to be accommodated per port.

A method and apparatus for an optical reroutable redundancy scheme. According to one embodiment of the invention, a wavelength division multiplexing optical network includes a number of nodes each having an optical cross connect and each having stored therein a database representing conversion free connectivity from that node to others of the nodes. In addition, each of the nodes employs a source based scheme with the database to provision optical circuits in real time and an optical reroutable redundancy scheme

Systems and methods for link discovery and verification technique that minimize the need for line termination resources that generate and interpret packets. Of two nodes verifying a link to one another, only one node need have any line termination capability. The node lacking line termination capability simply loops back packets generated by the other node thus verifying the link. Thus, an optical cross-connect can verify links to a wide variety of node types by employing a single line termination unit capable of terminating any suitable packet type. Alternatively, a router can verify connectivity to an optical cross-connect even when the optical cross-connect lacks any line termination capability at all. This saves greatly on implementation costs for optical networks.

A technique is disclosed for performing testing of an optical device under test (DUT). According to a specific embodiment, the DUT includes a plurality of DUT optical input ports and a plurality of DUT optical output ports. The testing may be performed by an optical switching testing system (OSTS) which includes a plurality of OSTS output ports optically connected to a plurality of DUT input ports, and a plurality of OSTS input ports optically connected to a plurality of DUT output ports. Components of the OSTS are configured in order to perform a specific test on the DUT. A first test scenario is configured at the DUT. At least one optical test signal is transmitted to at least one DUT input port. Test results may then be obtained by monitoring at least one DUT output port for the presence or absence of light. The test results are then analyzed for specific characteristics. According to a specific embodiment, the OSTS of the present invention may be adapted to automatically perform a plurality of testing operations on a selected plurality of different optical paths associated with the DUT. Such testing operations may include, for example, transmitting a plurality of optical test signals to a plurality of DUT input ports during a given test scenario, and/or monitoring a plurality of DUT output ports for test results during a given test scenario. According to a specific embodiment, the optical switch testing system of the present invention may be used to measure and verify selected characteristics associated with a device under test (DUT) or a system under test (SUT). Such characteristics may include, for example, optical cross talk, insertion loss, polarization dependent loss, path switching time, data integrity, optical path verification, optical path stability, etc.

The present invention provides methods, apparatus and systems for protecting connections between optical cross-connect switches and client equipment. A connection failure is detected, signaled, and a switch made by the client equipment and the optical cross-connect switch to a protection connection between them so as to minimize service interruption. An out-of-band channel or an in-band channel can be used to signal the connection failure.

The present invention provides methods and systems for restoring communication in a fiber optic network by placing error detection circuitry at the add/drop ports of the network nodes of the network. If the error detection circuitry detects an error condition for a communication signal traversing a normal communication path within the network, the communication signal is rerouted along a restoration communication path that is node and span disjoint from the first communication path. By requiring a restoration path to be node and span disjoint from the normal communication path, error detection circuitry need only be placed at the end nodes of the normal communication path. By allowing each node in the restoration path to dynamically choose the particular channels that can accommodate a particular communication signal at the time of the restoration, efficient use of available resources is gained. The result is a cost effective network that restores communication in times competitive to that of SONET rings.

Micromechanical devices are provided that are capable of movement due to a flexible portion. The micromechanical device can have a flexible portion formed of an oxide of preferably an element from groups 3A to 6A of the periodic table (preferably from the first two rows of these groups) and a late transition metal (preferably from groups 8B or 1B of the periodic table). The micromechanical devices can be any device, particularly MEMS sensors or actuators preferably having a flexible portion such as an accelerometer, DC relay or RF switch, optical cross connect or optical switch, or a micromirror part of an array for direct view and projection displays. The flexible portion is preferably formed by sputtering a target having a group 8B or 1B element and a selected group 3A to 6A element, namely B, Al, In, Si, Ge, Sn, or Pb. The target can have other major constituents or impurities (e.g. additional group 3A to 6A element(s)). The target is reactively sputtered in a oxygen ambient so as to result in a sputtered hinge. It is possible to form both stiff and/or flexible portions of the micromechanical device in this way.

A method of detecting a failure in a network, which includes a transport plane comprised of a plurality of communication nodes performing optical cross-connect and a control plane comprised of a plurality of control nodes that are connected to and control the respective communication nodes, includes the steps of transmitting, from a control node connected to a communication node having detected a failure to an adjacent control node, a failure information message having a time indication indicative of a time at which the failure is detected, and identifying, at a given control node which received the failure information message, a location of the failure in response to the time indication.

A universal in-service monitoring scheme to monitor performances of optical networks, including elements that make up the optical network, is proposed. The elements may be a wavelength selective switch or an optical cross connect. In this scheme, a small tunable probe signal is injected into the optical network via an input of the network. An output signal is received at the output and processed to determine if the probe signal is contained within the output signal. The scheme is such that probe signal injection and detection devices need not be physically co-located. Thus, the scheme is useful to test even optical network that spans thousands of miles. The probe signal is non-interfering with the network traffic so the network can be providing service while its performance is monitored. As examples of the probe signal detection mechanisms include lock-in amplification and coherent detection.

An optical crossconnect (OXC) fabric including an array of tiltable mirrors, a reflector and a plurality of optical fibers controls the position of the mirrors to optimize the transfer of a signal between an input optical fiber and an output optical fiber by monitoring the optical signal at an optical translation unit in each of the input optical fiber and the output optical fiber. The optical translation units are operable for regenerating the optical signals transmitted through the fibers.

An optical cross-connect assembly and method are provided that are suitable for use in both small-scale and large-scale applications. The optical cross-connect assembly comprises first and second stacks of multi-optical fiber connector modules that are configured to orthogonally mechanically couple with one another such that the optical ports of each of the connector modules of the first stack are optically aligned with respective optical ports of all of the connector modules of the second stack, and such that the optical ports of each of the connector modules of the second stack are optically aligned with respective optical ports of all of the connector modules of the first stack.

An optimally-sized optical cross-connect that switches optical signal paths with a minimum number of wavelength selective switches and their interconnections. To switch optical signals of N routes (N=1, 2, . . . ), an optical cross-connect includes a 2×N (2-input, N-output) wavelength selective switch for each of N input routes and a N×2 (N-input, 2-output) wavelength selective switch for each of N output routes. One input port of each 2×N wavelength selective switch receives an optical signal from a corresponding input route, while the other input port of the same receives an optical add signal from a corresponding add route. One output port of each N×2 wavelength selective switch outputs an optical signal to a corresponding output route, while the other output port outputs an optical drop signal to a corresponding drop route.

A scheme for guaranteeing network tunnel path (NTP). e.g., Internet Protocol (IP), service levels in optical (e.g., wavelength-division multiplex (WDM)) networks. The invention, in one embodiment, accounts for both network topology (e.g. switches, cross-connects, and links between nodes) and resource usage (e.g., available/provisioned link bandwidth and available/used wavelength paths), which information may be available from the IP and optical WDM protocol layers, in particular (i) router capacities and (ii) presence or absence of wavelength conversion capability of optical cross-connect at each node. A determination is made whether to route an arriving request for an NTP over existing topology by computing “good” routes in accordance with a defined metric, or to open a new, available optical wavelength path by provisioning nodes of the topology for, and computing “good” routes for new wavelength paths. As many requests as possible are identified without a priori information of future requests.

This invention discloses a highly scalable and modular automated optical cross connect switch comprised of large numbers of densely packed fiber strands suspended within a common volume. In particular, apparatus and methods enabling programmable interconnection of large numbers of optical fibers (100's-1000's) having structured and coherent braid representations are provided.