Patent Document ID: 5532856
Application ID: 08269913
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A planar optical mesh-connected tree interconnect network comprising: a planar array of mesh-connected leaf nodes, each leaf node comprising an optical transmitter means and an optical receiver means; parent nodes, each parent node being disposed in the plane of said planar array and intermediate an associated pair of leaf nodes, each parent node comprising optical transmitter means and optical receiver means, said parent nodes being associated with leaf nodes in accordance with a mesh-connected tree structure; means for causing transmitter means of a preselected leaf node or preselected parent node to transmit an optical signal to receiver means at a predetermined leaf node or predetermined parent node after reflection at a reflecting plane for communicating between said preselected node and said predetermined node; and an array of micro-optical means disposed in the path of said optical signal, where a first layer of material is disposed between said nodes and said array of micro-optical means and a second layer of material is disposed between said array of micro-optical means and said reflecting plane.