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 optical transport network (OTN) node including a plurality of optical circuit switches (OCSs), each OCS being a respective degree of the OTN node, at least two of the OCSs including an input port configured to be connected to a respective optical transport fiber outside of the OTN node, at least one first output port connected to a first switching layer, and at least one second output port connected to a second switching layer. The first and second switching layers have different levels of granularity, such as but not limited to a wavelength switched layer, a band switched layer or a fiber switched layer.

Provided are a subminiature optical transmission module and a method for manufacturing same. The optical transmission module includes: a mold body having a first surface and a second surface opposite to each other; multiple edge-type light emitting elements, each of which is molded inside the mold body by fitting same to the first surface so as to match with the first surface and generates an optical signal in the edge direction of a chip; and an optical component disposed on one side thereof so as to optically multiplex multiple optical signals incident from the multiple edge-type light emitting elements and to output same, wherein the identical height is configured between the surface of each light emitting element and the optical axis of the optical component, and the edge direction of the chip is parallel to the first surface of the mold body.

A method for constructing an AWG based non-blocking optical multicast switching network, comprising constructing a non-blocking optical copy network via a wavelength replication module and an arrayed waveguide grating recursively and constructing a non-blocking optical multicast switching network via cascading a data copy network with a point-to-point switching network. The number of active optical devices required for constructing an N×N optical switching network with r input/output ports and with each port carrying m wavelengths is just O(N log.sub.m N), realizing system scalability and saving hardware cost and power consumption. By splitting the routing path of the multicast network into a routing path with O(1) complexity in the copy network and a routing path in a point-to-point unicast switching network, the routing complexity of the multicast switching network is equivalent to that of a unicast switching network.

An optoelectronic switch comprising: a first plurality of detector remodulators (DRMs) (C3, D1), each DRM having an integer number M of optical inputs and an integer number N of optical outputs; a second plurality of DRMs (C7, D5), each DRM having N optical inputs and M optical outputs; a passive optical switch fabric (C4+C5+C6, D2+D3+D4) connecting the N optical outputs of each of the first plurality of DRMs with the N optical inputs of each of the second plurality of DRMs, the path of an optical signal through the optical switch fabric depending upon its wavelength; wherein each DRM (C3, D1) of the first plurality of DRMs is configured to act as a tunable wavelength converter to select the desired path of an optical signal through the optical switch fabric (C4+C5+C6, D2+D3+D4); and wherein each of the first plurality of DRMs (C3, D1) includes a concentrator, the concentrator configured to aggregate optical signals received from any of the M inputs of that DRM and to buffer them according to the one of the plurality of second DRMs (C7, D5) that includes their destination port.

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.

An optical circuit switching matrix includes a plurality of optical ports, each optical port being optically coupled to a respective one of a plurality of user nodes and an optical coupler having at least one input port optically coupled to the plurality of optical ports, and an output port. The optical circuit switching matrix also includes a wavelength demultiplexer having an input optically coupled to the output port of the optical coupler, and a plurality of output ports, each output port being optically coupled to a respective one of the plurality of optical ports.

The present invention provides an optoelectronic switch for transferring an optical signal from an input device to an output device, the optoelectronic switch including an array of interconnected switch modules, which are interconnected by an interconnecting fabric. The switch modules are arranged in an N-dimensional array, the ith dimension having a size Ri (i=1, 2, . . . , N), each switch module having an associated set of coordinates giving its location with respect to each of the N dimensions. Each switch module is a member of N such sub-arrays Si, each sub-array Si comprising Ri switch modules whose coordinates differ only in respect of their location in the ith dimension, and each of the N sub-arrays being associated with a different dimension.

A method may include transmitting, by an optical device, a first channel. The first channel may have a first set of subcarriers. The first channel may be attenuated during transmission by a filter associated with a wavelength selective switch. The method may further include transmitting, by the optical device, a second channel. The second channel may have a second set of subcarriers. The second channel may be attenuated during transmission by the filter associated with the wavelength selective switch. The first channel and the second channel being included in a super-channel. The first set of subcarriers may be selected based on a first signal quality factor associated with attenuation of the first set of subcarriers by the filter. The second set of subcarriers may be selected based on a second signal quality factor associated with attenuation of the second set of subcarriers by the filter.

A photonic interconnect apparatus includes tunable light devices, multiplexers to multiplex optical signals produced by the tunable light devices onto optical paths, and a cyclic arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) to receive the optical signals over the optical paths, and to direct a given optical signal of the received optical signals to a selected output of a plurality of outputs of the cyclic AWG based on a wavelength of the given optical signal. A respective demultiplexer directs the given optical signal to a selected output of a plurality of outputs of the respective demultiplexer according to which coarse wavelength band the wavelength of the given optical signal is part of.