Large-scale 3d fiber cross-connect system
AssigneeEpcomm Inc
InventorXuezhe Zheng
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A large-scale 3D fiber cross-connect system is disclosed. The system uses modularized and stackable beam steering units to build input and output arrays that can be expanded to large-scale system of 1000×1000 ports or more. The disclosure provides a two-mirror configuration that minimizes size of the modular beam steering units. With one mirror being fixed on the propagation path of the optical beam and another mirror steerable in a 2D dimension, an any-to-any switching of the large-scale system may be built by stacking the beam steering units over an appropriate distance.
Claims20
A beam steering unit for a 3D fiber cross-connect system comprising:
- a fiber collimator configured to convert an input optical signal to an input optical beam;
- a first mirror configured to reflect the input optical beam to a second mirror;
- and
- the second mirror configured to reflect the input optical beam to free space,
- wherein the first mirror and the second mirror are placed on an optical path of the input optical beam.
A 3D fiber cross-connect system, comprising:
- a first array of beam steering units coupled to a first array of input fibers;
- and
- a second array of beam steering units coupled to a second array of output fibers,
- wherein the first array of the beam steering units and the second array of beam steering units are placed over a distance, wherein an input optical beam reflected by any beam steering unit of the first array is received by any beam steering unit of the second array over the distance.
A beam steering unit for a 3D fiber cross-connect system comprising:
- a fiber collimator;
- a first mirror configured to reflect an input optical beam to a second mirror and/or reflect an output optical beam to the fiber collimator;
- and
- the second mirror configured to reflect the first optical beam to free space and/or reflect the second optical beam to the first mirror,
- wherein the input optical beam is converted by the fiber collimator from an input optical signal and wherein the output optical beam is received from the free space.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.