Patent ID: 7397980

Claim:
An optical signal manipulation system including: a series of ports for carrying a series of optical signals to be manipulated; a spatial separating means for simultaneously spatially separating at least a first and a second group of light from said series of optical signals, each of said first and second group including a multiplicity of independent wavelength channels, with the wavelength channels of the first group having overlapping wavelength ranges of the wavelength channels of the second group; a wavelength dispersion element subsequently spatially separating the multiplicity of wavelength channels of said first and second group and projecting them onto a wavelength processing means; and wavelength processing means for separately processing each of the separated wavelengths of said first and second group, with each of wavelength channels of the first and second group being processed independently at a separated spatial location, said wavelength processing means having a series of independent wavelength processing elements, with separate wavelength processing elements simultaneously processing the wavelength channels having overlapping wavelength ranges of the first and second group.