Scalable and modular automated fiber optic cross-connect systems

A system of spatially reconfigurable, cross-connected strands for carrying a multiplicity of independent signals across an intervening gap, the strands defining a geometric braid within the gap, the geometric braid having a number of physically separate subbraids emerging from a common extended, linear origin in a first plane and separating out at diverging angles and rearrangeably connected to a multiplicity of spaced-apart terminals arranged along a multiplicity of columns and rows in a second plane,

• wherein each subbraid comprises:
• a multiplicity of individual strands characterized by an ordered hierarchical relation and topologically equivalent to an ordered stack of separable layers, each strand represented by an individual layer of the stack and ordered such that layers of the stack to one side of the individual layer are characterized by a higher position in the first plane, and layers on the opposite side are characterized by a lower position in the first plane, and wherein
• any individual strand of a first subbraid may pass through a second subbraid in a knot-free fashion by subdividing the second subbraid such that the individual strand is able to pass through the stack of separable layers at a location separating those layers in lower positions in the first plane from those layers in higher positions in the first plane, and wherein
• strands are maintained in substantially straight-line paths between the first plane and the second plane.