Optical channel cross connect for telecommunication systems in wdm technology (wavelength division multiplexing) having a double spatial switching structure of optical flows strictly not blocking and interposed functional units operating on single channels

Abstract

An optical cross-connect for the switching of optical channels at variable bit-rate (up to 10 Gbit/s), wavelength division multiplexed on bi-directional optical fibers forming the transmission backbone of a transport network; in particular the cross-connect can be interfaced to fibers crossing the nodes of a ring having large territorial extension, provided with protection fibers. The cross-connect includes a spatial Split & Select input stage of WDM aggregates, followed by a set of channel filters tunable on the whole optical range occupied by the channels, which jointly form a structure strictly not blocking the access to the channels by a set of bridge units whose functionality is selectable on a per-channel basis, such as for instance: transit, drop/insert, regeneration, etc. An output optical spatial Split & Select stage connects in a strictly non-blocking way the single channels from bridge units to optical multiplexers that reconstruct the WDM aggregate on the output fibers. The duplicated architecture of the bridge units for the protection fibers enables the protection of each single local drop/insert channel (FIGS. and ).