An optical switching apparatus includes an input port, a dispersion component, a first filter, a redirection component, and output ports. The input port enables a first and a second beam to be incident onto the dispersion component, which decomposes the first and the second beams respectively into a plurality of first and second sub-beams, where the plurality of first sub-beams and second sub-beams belong to different bands. The first filter separates transmission directions of the plurality of first and second sub-beams into different transmission directions in a first direction (X) based on the different bands, enables the plurality of first and second sub-beams respectively to be incident onto a first area and a second area of the redirection component, where the first and second areas are separated in the first direction.

An undersea fiber optic cable routing architecture including a branching unit coupled to three trunk cables capable of switching individual fibers in each fiber pair within a cable to either of the other two cables. The branching unit comprises a plurality of optical switches and a controller for receiving remote command signals and configuring the optical switches in accordance with the remote command signals.

Waveguide shuffle blocks (WSBs) are provided that may incorporate waveguides routed in any pattern to effectuate many-to-many connectivity between optical cables/fibers or other WSBs connected thereto. Such WSBs may be configured in ways that allow the WSBs to be stacked and to achieve effective optical cable/fiber organization. Moreover, such WSBs may include readable tags that can provide information regarding a particular WSB configuration and/or what optical cables/fibers are connected so that network topology can be discovered and monitored. Some WSBs may be configured as wavelength shifting shuffles (WSSs) that allow a particular wavelength(s) of an optical signal(s) to be routed as desired and/or alter a first wavelength associated with a particular optical signal to a second wavelength. In other embodiments WSSs can be configured to allow for wavelength multiplexing/demultiplexing.

An undersea fiber optic cable routing architecture including a branching unit coupled to three trunk cables capable of switching individual fibers in each fiber pair within a cable to either of the other two cables. The branching unit comprises a plurality of optical switches and a controller for receiving remote command signals and configuring the optical switches in accordance with the remote command signals.

A method for creating a hybrid electric and optical data center network is provided with a plurality of servers, a plurality of ToR/EoR switches, and an optical central switch. Each of the plurality servers maintains an electronic connection with a corresponding ToR/EoR switch from the plurality of switches. The plurality of ToR/EoR switches is interconnected to each other electronically and optically. The optical central switch in conjunction with a plurality of tunable transceivers allows a signal originating from any of the plurality of the servers, to traverse the data center network to reach any destination server. To do so, wavelength switching takes place via the plurality of transceivers at each of the ToR/EoR switches. Simultaneously, space switching takes place within the center switch. By utilizing the method, intra data center bandwidth is optimized and the network the method is utilized in is non-blocking.

A core selective switch in an optical node device included in a spatial channel optical network includes a spatial demultiplexing unit, an optical switch, and an optical interconnect unit, wherein the spatial demultiplexing unit is an MCF collimator array in which a plurality of MCF collimators each comprising both an MCF having S cores and a collimator lens are two-dimensionally arranged in a plane, the optical switch is a variable reflection angle mirror array in which S variable reflection angle mirrors are two-dimensionally arranged in a plane in a manner similar to a core arrangement in the MCF, the optical interconnect unit is a steering lens, and a beam light output from each core of an input MCF is focused on a variable reflection angle mirror corresponding to the core to be reflected to couple to a corresponding core of a desired output MCF.

An apparatus includes an input port group, which includes multiple input slots, and multiple input ports are provided in each input slot. An input allocation matrix includes multiple first optical switches, and an input port of the first optical switch is connected to an input port of the input slot. A cross-connect matrix includes multiple second optical switches, and an output port of the first optical switch is connected to an input port of the second optical switch. An output allocation matrix includes multiple third optical switches, and an input port of the third optical switch is connected to an output port of the second optical switch. An output port group includes multiple output slots, multiple output ports are provided in each output slot, and an output port of the output slot is connected to an output port of the third optical switch.

The present disclosure discloses a data transmission method, an apparatus, and a system. The method includes: receiving, by a mode multiplexer from an input port, a first optical signal transmitted by an optical line terminal; converting, according to a correspondence between an input port of an optical signal and a mode of the optical signal, the received first optical signal into a second optical signal in a mode corresponding to the input port; and multiplexing the second optical signal obtained by means of conversion to a few-mode optical fiber for transmission. This increases transmission capacity of a single optical fiber and implements fast expansion of the transmission capacity, thereby improving total bandwidth utilization of a system.

The disclosed system implements a bandwidth-reconfigurable optical interconnect, which couples optical signals between N interconnect inputs and N interconnect outputs. The system includes an arrayed waveguide grating router (AWGR), which provides cyclic, single-wavelength, all-to-all routing between N AWGR inputs and N AWGR outputs. The system also includes a wavelength-insensitive switch, which provides all-wavelength, all-to-all connectivity between N wavelength-insensitive inputs and N wavelength-insensitive outputs. The system additionally includes a wavelength-selective input switch, which selectively directs up to L wavelengths from each of the N interconnect inputs into a corresponding input of the wavelength-insensitive switch, wherein unselected wavelengths from each of the N interconnect inputs pass into a corresponding AWGR input. Finally, the system includes a wavelength-selective output switch, which selectively directs up to L wavelengths from each of the N wavelength-insensitive outputs into a corresponding interconnect output, wherein each of the N AWGR outputs pass into a corresponding interconnect output.

Methods and devices for manipulating optical signals. In one example, a LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) device includes a surface bearing an anti-reflection structure. The anti-reflection structure includes i) a physical surface having a topography with features having lateral dimensions of less than 2000 nm and having an average refraction index which decreases with distance away from the surface; and ii) a configuration of the topography, averaged over lateral dimensions of greater than 2000 nm, varies with lateral position on the surface.