Photonic Fiber Optic Switcher

The first is 100% optical switching using 3D MEMMS Technology.  It uses electronically controlled mirrors to route optical signals.  This type of switch has an Optical input, an Optical cross-point and an Optical output.  The abbreviation for this technology is OOO.  An OOO switch provides only Point to Point switching.  One input can not be multicast to many outputs.  The mirrors can not point to more than one output at a time.  The use of mirrors does permit multiple wavelengths in both directions.  Switches are available is sizes from 8 by 8 to 256 by 256.  Pure optical switching is available for Multimode and Singlemode applications.  Optical switching supports both analog and digital optical signals.

Pure optical switching is performed using 3D micro-electro-mechanical mirror (MEMS) arrays.  Tiny mirrors are fabricated out of silicon.  The mirrors are positioned and controlled with electrostic charges.  The core of the optical switch is a one inch square cube.  The cube has an array of up to 256 input fibers on the left side as shown in figure 33.  Each fiber has a lens that focuses the optical light onto a MEMS mirror.  Each input has its own mirror.  On the right side is an array of output fibers.  Each output has a MEMS mirror.  An optical connection is made when one input mirror aligns with one of the output mirrors.

FIGURE 33 Three dimensional MEMS pure optic switching element.

3D MEMS Pure Optic Switching, Figure 33

Fiber Optic Switching is ideal for video broadcast, production, security and other video applications requiring transmission, switching and replication of high quality optical signals.  The Fiber Optical Switcher revolutionizes how video is distributed and managed. It is based on sate-of-the-art field proven photonic switching technology. Laser light is switched in a pure optical format, without electrical conversion, allowing it to support transparent connections compatible with any video or data format including uncompressed HD video at 1.5 Gbps.  Also, since the switching is done optically, the switch eliminates video degradation. With a traditional electrical switcher, Electrical to Optical (EO) and Optical to Electrical (OE) conversions are required which cause signal degradation and jitter.

An optical switch supports a wide range of formats from 19.4 Mbps ATSC through 3.0 Gbps HDTV as well as NTSC, PAL, SECAM, SMPTE 259M Serial Digital (SDI) Video, broadband analog, DVI, HDMI, RGB, VGA, component, L-Band, IF, and many more. The optical switcher will also transparently switches CWDM and DWDM signals.

Optical switcher technology can be used in the field to support applications requiring reliable, high-quality video distribution such as Mobile production trucks, sports venues and professional video facilities; Campus video and surveillance networks; Remote video monitoring as well as Government and military.  Optical layer protection and fault tolerant switching can be configured for mission critical, non-stop applications.

Optical switching is extremely cost effective for any applications requiring thirty-two or more switched optical ports. It eliminates the need for expensive video transceivers to convert signals between electrical and optical formats. Switching the signals in optical format can save thousands of dollars per port in fiber optic transport equipment costs.

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