Scalable optical switches and switching modules

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9581765-B2
Application number	US-201414518290-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 20, 2014
Priority date	Oct 28, 2011
Publication date	Feb 28, 2017
Grant date	Feb 28, 2017

Abstract

Telecommunications switches are presented, including expandable optical switches that allow for a switch of N inputs×M outputs to be expanded arbitrarily to a new number of N inputs and/or a new number of M outputs. Switches having internal switch blocks controlling signal bypass lines are also provided, with these switches being useful for the expandable switches.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An optical network switching node comprising N input light-paths, a drop bank and a contention mitigation structure, wherein the drop bank comprises a multicast switch (MCS) with input lines and output lines and the contention mitigation structure comprises a selective optical switch with the output from the selective optical switch directed through light channels to inputs of the MCS, wherein the N input light paths are divided into a subset providing input to the contention mitigation structure and a further subset providing input to the drop bank.

2. The optical network switching node of claim 1 wherein the MCS comprises output light-paths, expansion-in ports, bypass light-paths connected to the expansion-in ports and bypass switches optically connected to the bypass light paths and the output light paths to selective send an optical signal to a output light path and wherein the selective optical switch comprises output light paths optically connected to the expansion-in ports of the MCS.

3. The optical network switching node of claim 1 wherein the selective optical switch comprises expansion-out ports optically coupled to input ports of the MCS.

4. The optical network switching node of claim 1 wherein the contention mitigation structure comprises a wavelength selective switch (WSS), an optical amplifier configured to amplify output from the WSS and optical splitters connecting the optical amplifiers and the MCS switches.

5. The optical network switching node of claim 1 wherein the MCS switches comprise 1×L optical splitters and K×1 switches.

6. The optical network switching node of claim 1 comprising a plurality of contention mitigation banks.

7. A method for performing optical network switching comprising directing light through an optical network switching node of claim 1 with light either:
directed into the node through the input lines and output from the node through the MCS output lines, or
alternatively directed into the node through the MCS output lines and output from the node through the input lines.

Assignees

• Neophotonics Corp

Inventors

• Way Winston
• Ticknor Anthony J
• Vorobeichik Ilya

Classifications

• H04Q11/0005 Primary

  Switch and router aspects · CPC title

• G02B6/3562

  Switch of the bypass type, i.e. enabling a change of path in a network, e.g. to bypass a failed element in the network · CPC title

• H04J14/0219

  Modular or upgradable architectures · CPC title

• H04Q2011/0052

  Interconnection of switches · CPC title

• G02B6/3546 Primary

  NxM switch, i.e. a regular array of switches elements of matrix type constellation · CPC title