Patent ID: 6983108

Claim:
An optical switching apparatus provided for an optical signal transmitting apparatus connected to a plurality of optical transmission lines, said optical switching apparatus comprising: the function of splitting optical signals arrived via said optical transmission lines into a plurality of sub-signals and sending them to a plurality of optical transmission lines other than the optical transmission lines over which the optical signals came, wherein said optical signal transmitting apparatus is provided for a network to which a plurality of optical signal transmitting apparatuses are connected via said optical transmission lines, and said optical switching apparatus forms Point-to-Point connection paths which connect senders of signals and receivers of signals in a one-to-one correspondence, between the optical signal transmitting apparatus in which said optical switching apparatus is provided and another optical signal transmitting apparatus, and said optical switching apparatus further comprises: n×m (n and m are natural numbers) input ports to which optical signals are inputted; n×m output ports for outputting optical signals; n×m optical splitting elements for each splitting in half the optical signal inputted from the corresponding one of said input ports; and an optical matrix switch including 2×n×m input terminals to which the split signals outputted from the optical splitting elements are inputted in a one-to-one correspondence and n×m output terminals connected to said output ports in a one-to-one correspondence.