Scalable and modular automated fiber optic cross-connect systems

In an optical fiber management apparatus with orderly and deterministic fiber routing within a limited volume, an arrayed collection of optical fibers each in a substantially straight-line configuration, spanning an interconnect volume and a storage volume containing fiber tensioning and storage elements spaced apart in three dimensions, the optical fibers being continuous in length therebetween, comprising:

• a multiplicity of terminals arrayed in two dimensions along a surface of the interconnect volume for receiving and latching to the proximal ends of the optical fibers;
• an array of circumferential through ports along the plane separating the interconnect volume and the storage volume, the through ports including low friction surfaces engaging optical fibers;
• a multiplicity of arrayed fiber tensioning and storage elements configured to limit fiber lengths sufficiently to maintain a substantially straight-line configuration.

For improved management of dense interconnections of signal carrying strands, a disentangled and physically ordered arrangement for interconnecting longitudinally extended strands residing within a limited volume bounded by a two-dimensional array of terminals with a height H1 and array column spacing D at a first plane and by a one-dimensional port array of height H2, parallel to the columns of two-dimensional array and located at a second plane spaced apart from the first plane by a distance Z, wherein

• each strand, of cross-sectional dimension do, extends into the limited volume from a unique elevation along the one-dimensional port array and includes tensioning means coupled to each strand to provide a particular range of tension such that each strand follows a substantially linear path within the limited volume while connecting a terminal of the two-dimensional array to a port of the one-dimensional port array;
• the range of said tension being adequate to separate the strands within the limited volume into spatially independent, three-dimensional, wedge-shaped zones;
• the column spacing D being selected such that the width of each wedge-shaped zone at an intermediate location z=ZH1/H2 behind the first plane and within the limited volume is equal to D(1−H1/H2), this width being sufficient to physically retain all strands residing within the zone.

A system of spatially reconfigurable, cross-connected strands for carrying a multiplicity of independent signals across an intervening gap, the collection of 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 to a second plane comprised of a multiplicity of columns of parallel, spaced apart terminals, wherein each subbraid comprises:

• the multiplicity of individual strands within each subbraid characterized by an ordered hierarchical relation and topologically equivalent to an ordered stack of separable layers, each strand residing within a layer of the stack and ordered such that all layers of the stack to one side of the individual layer are characterized by a superior relation, and all layers on the opposite side are characterized by an inferior relation, whereby any individual strand of a first subbraid may pass through a second subbraid in a knot-free fashion by bifurcating the second subbraid such that the individual strand passes through the stack of layers at a location separating those layers in inferior relation and those layers in superior relation.