Optical wavelength-selective switch with a bank of wavelength convertors

An apparatus, comprising:

• a wavelength-selective optical switch able to route light between a first optical port and a plurality of second optical ports;
• and
• wherein the wavelength-selective optical switch includes a bank of optical wavelength-converters;
• and
• wherein each optical wavelength-converter of the bank is able to selectively optically couple an optical data stream on a wavelength-channel between the first optical port and individual ones of the second optical ports;
• and
• wherein the wavelength-selective optical switch further comprises:
• an optical wavelength separator configured to separate light received at the first optical port based on wavelength;
• and
• an array of optical reflectors, each optical reflector of the array being controllable to selectively redirect light received from the optical wavelength separator to individual ones of the second optical ports and being controllable to selectively redirect light received thereat from the optical separator to individual ones of the optical wavelength-converters.

An apparatus, comprising:

• a wavelength-selective optical switch able to route light between a first optical port and a plurality of second optical ports;
• and
• wherein the wavelength-selective optical switch includes a bank of optical wavelength-converters;
• wherein each of the optical wavelength-converters of the bank is able to selectively optically couple an optical data stream on a wavelength-channel between the first optical port and individual ones of the second optical ports;
• and
• wherein the apparatus further comprises:
• a reconfigurable optical cross-connect for optically connecting multiple optical transmission fibers, the reconfigurable optical cross-connect including the optical wavelength-selective switch and being controllable to wavelength-convert some wavelength-channels that the reconfigurable optical cross-connect is able to optically cross-connect between the optical transmission fibers.

A method, comprising:

• optically de-multiplexing light incident on an optical input of an optical wavelength-selective switch such that the incident light of each optical wavelength-channel of a sequence of non-overlapping optical wavelength channels is directed to a different optical output of the optical wavelength-selective switch;
• and
• wherein the optically de-multiplexing comprises:
• in an optical wavelength-converter, wavelength-converting a first part of the incident light on one of the optical wavelength-channels and redirecting the wavelength-converted first part to a first of the optical outputs and
• in the same optical wavelength-converter, subsequently wavelength-converting a second later part of the incident light on a different second of the optical wavelength-channels and redirecting the wavelength-converted second later part to a different one of the optical outputs.

A method, comprising:

• in an optical wavelength-selective switch, optically multiplexing a plurality of optical data streams received at corresponding optical inputs of the optical wavelength-selective switch;
• and
• wherein the optically multiplexing includes wavelength-converting optical carriers carrying some of the received optical data streams in optical wavelength-converters during a first period;
• and
• wherein the optically multiplexing includes wavelength-converting optical carriers carrying some of the received optical data streams in the optical wavelength-converters during a subsequent second period such that at least, one of the optical wavelength-converters operates on the optical data streams received at different ones of the optical inputs in the first and second periods.