Expanding the switching capabilities of optical cross-connects

Abstract

Optical switching technologies exhibit many characteristics that the electronic switching technologies do not have. One such characteristic lies in switching states. An electronic crosspoint, having open and close as its two switching states, only allows one traversing signal. But an optical switching crosspoint, such as a directional coupler or a MEMS mirror, usually allows two traversing signals. This paper studies how the characteristic can expand the switching capabilities of an optical switch and shows new ways of building more crosspoint-efficient nonblocking switches.