US 6,674,937 B1 · Optical wavelength routing circuits

Abstract

The present invention comprises apparatuses and methods, for routing optical communication signals over all DWDM wavelength channels. Incoming wavelength channels are separated into a plurality of sub-groups having a smaller optical bandwidth. Wavelength channels within each sub-group are then acted upon independently by a filter, or switch, tunable and operable over the bandwidth of each sub-group. The invention may be embodied in a plurality of dynamic wavelength routing circuits including 1×N and N×N circuits. The 1×N circuit embodiments may be used when the filter free-spectral range is smaller than the full DWDM bandwidth. These embodiments are less complicated than the N×N circuit embodiments, but do not provide the same routing bandwidth. The N×N circuit embodiments may be used to route the full DWDM bandwidth and may be used for other routing operations having large bandwidth demand.

Claims26

Dependent claims

An apparatus for optically routing wavelength channels over at least a portion of the dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) bandwidth, said apparatus comprising:

a first optical element adapted to separate a plurality of input DWDM wavelength channels into a plurality of sub-groups of DWDM wavelength channels, each sub-group of DWDM wavelength channels having a bandwidth less than the bandwidth of said plurality of input DWDM wavelength channels;
and,
a plurality of tunable wavelength filtering elements, each adapted to receive a respective sub-group of DWDM wavelength channels from said first optical element and having a limited tuning range selected for operation with he bandwidth of said respective sub-group of DWDM wavelength channels.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Optical wavelength routing circuits

Life of this patent

Optical wavelength routing circuits

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims26