| US 7,496,252 B1 | ||
| Optical switch fabric with redundancy | ||
| Charles Matthew Corbalis, Saratoga, Calif. (US); Roger Jonathan Helkey, Montecito, Calif. (US); and Walt Joseph Fant, Los Gatos, Calif. (US) | ||
| Assigned to Calient Networks, Inc., San Jose, Calif. (US) | ||
| Filed on Apr. 14, 2005, as Appl. No. 11/107,245. | ||
| Application 11/107245 is a division of application No. 09/876715, filed on Jun. 06, 2001, granted, now 6,882,766. | ||
| Int. Cl. G02B 6/26 (2006.01); G02B 6/42 (2006.01) | ||
| U.S. Cl. 385—16 [385/17] | 16 Claims |
| 1. An optical switch fabric comprising:
an input stage;
an output stage; and
a center stage comprising
a minimum number of center switches greater than one that cause the optical switch fabric to be strict-sense nonblocking;
and
at least one additional center switch to provide redundancy for the optical switch fabric, wherein the input stage, the center
stage, and the output stage are coupled in a cascaded manner and each of the center switches contain microelectromechanical
mirrors.
|