The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 21, 2006
Filed:
May. 04, 2004
Xiaojun Fang, Burlingame, CA (US);
Li-ping Chen, Foster City, CA (US);
Boris Faer, Belmont, CA (US);
Xiaojun Fang, Burlingame, CA (US);
Li-Ping Chen, Foster City, CA (US);
Boris Faer, Belmont, CA (US);
Sprint Communications Company L.P., Overland Park, KS (US);
Abstract
An optical fiber protection switch that performs automatic protection switching. The optical fiber protection switch performs span and ring switching at the optical layer, thereby negating the need for SONET ADMs to perform the switching at the SONET layer. The optical fiber protection switch includes span switches and ring switches arranged to provide span and ring switching, respectively. The span switches and ring switches are implemented using 2×2 optical switches, for a total of eight 2×2 optical switches in the optical fiber protection switch. The system described herein may utilize SONET terminals and/or ATM switches in a WDM environment to support capacity increases while providing the ring and span switching functionality. A network switching element providing transparent, self-healing optical 4-fiber BLSR (OBLSR/4) is realized by using the optical fiber protection switch described herein.