Optical switching device based on stable, non-absorbing optical hard limiters
AssigneeNortel Networks Limited
InventorsErik V. Johnson, Edward H. Sargent
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Abstract
An optical switching device based on stable, non-absorbing optical hard limiters optically switches optical information from an input to a number of outputs based upon address information contained in the optical information. The optical switching device optically detects the location of the address bits in the optical information, optically samples the address bits, optically decodes the sampled address bits, optically activates an output based upon the decoded address bits, and optically outputs the optical information over the activated output.
Claims4
An optical switching device based upon stable, non-absorbing optical hard limiters, the optical switching device comprising:
- means for sampling a number of address bits in an optical information stream;
- and
- means for selecting an output for the optical information stream based upon the sampled address bits;
- means for outputting the optical information stream over the selected output;
- and
- means for providing an optical framing signal to the address bit sampling means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.