Patent ID: 7333688

Claim:
An optical switching apparatus comprising: a planar lightwave circuit (PLC) including a single bidirectional input/output waveguide, a waveguide array coupled to the single input/output waveguide, said array having a plurality of waveguides terminated at an edge facet of the PLC, at least one lens positioned adjacent to the PLC, and a reflector device positioned adjacent to the at least one lens, such that when a multi-wavelength input optical signal is coupled through the single bidirectional input/output waveguide in to the PLC, the waveguide array generates a phased array optical signal at the edge facet of the PLC, the at least one lens spatially Fourier transforms the phased array optical signal, thereby generating a spectrally resolved image of the input optical signal, and the reflector device selectively reflects the spectrally resolved image through the at least one lens and selectively couples the image into the waveguide array of the PLC to generate a desired output optical signal at the single input/output waveguide, wherein the single input/output waveguide couple the desired output signal out from the PLC, characterized in that: the single bidirectional input/output waveguide is the only input as well as the only output waveguide for the PLC such that it carries the multi-wavelength input optical signal and the desired output optical signal to and from the PLC respectively.