Patent ID: 8111990

Claim:
An apparatus for transferring optical data in an optical switching system using time synchronization, the optical switching system comprising demultiplexers and multiplexers respectively connected to a plurality of input ports and output ports and transferring optical data having transfer information using a plurality of wavelengths, and a switch connected between the demultiplexers and the multiplexers and switching the optical data to an output port of a desired destination node, the apparatus comprising: time synchronization means respectively disposed on the input ports to dynamically time-synchronize all the optical data before optical data are input to the demultiplexers; time measurement means connected between the switch and the multiplexers to measure output times of all optical data output from the switch; buffer means connected between input terminals and output terminals of the switch, and receiving the optical data from the switch when contention occurs among the optical data to perform buffering according to whether or not output resources are available and then transfer them to a corresponding output port; and control means for checking contention between the optical data on the basis of the transfer information according to whether or not output resources are available to control the switch, receiving information on output times of all the optical data measured by the time measurement means and comparing the information with a previously set reference switching time to determine whether or not to perform time synchronization, and controlling output times of the optical data output from the buffer means according to the determination result.