Patent ID: 9438969
Filing Date: 2016-09-06
CPC Classification: G02B,H04Q

Claim Text:
1. A method for optically switching a plurality of optical input signals, the method comprising: receiving the plurality of optical input signals, wherein one or more of the optical input signals represent multiple channels at different channel frequencies; spreading the received plurality of optical input signals by an anamorphic optical element; collimating the spread plurality of optical signals to a portion of rows of a light switch, wherein the light switch comprises of a single beam steering array having a plurality of microelements arranged in a horizontal direction and a vertical direction; dispersing the collimated optical signals so that signals of different wavelength are separated by different angles; focusing the optical signals on the light switch device, wherein the light from a channel on a single input fiber is spread over multiple microelements of the light switch; controlling the light switch by a control signal to direct one or more of the optical signals separated by different angles to one or more output fibers for multicasting of the optical input signals, wherein each of said one or more output fibers accepts optical inputs from any row and column of the light switch; and addressing the microelements to tailor a precise spectral limits of the channel, and to send a fraction of the incident light to each output fiber, and performing noise filtering by altering a region on the light switch that act together for each multiple channel.