BEAMFORMING FOR AN OPTICAL SWITCH

摘要

Disclosed herein are various embodiments of an optical cross-connect switch in which optical beamforming is used to generate desired (e.g., technically beneficial) beam profiles at the beam-steering element of the switch. An example beam profile that can be generated in this manner is a substantially rectangular beam profile generated from an input optical beam having a substantially Gaussian beam profile. The use of rectangular beam profiles may be beneficial because such beam profiles can be used to increase the optical fill factor of the beam-steering element of the switch, thereby enabling the switch to have a higher number of optical ports and/or a lower cost per optical port than comparable conventional optical cross-connect switches. In an example embodiment, the disclosed optical cross-connect switch can be used to implement a wavelength-selective optical router.

主权项

1. An apparatus comprising:
an array of optical ports; a beam-steering device optically coupled to the array of optical ports and having a beam-steering surface that comprises a plurality of configurable pixels; and a beam transformer interposed between the array of optical ports and the beam-steering surface, wherein the beam transformer comprises a plurality of optical elements optically coupled to each other and located between a first side of the beam transformer and a second side of the beam transformer and configured to interconvert a first electromagnetic-field pattern of the first side and a second electromagnetic-field pattern of the second side, the first side facing the array of optical ports and the second side facing the beam-steering surface; and wherein the plurality of optical elements are further configured to cause the first electromagnetic-field pattern and the second electromagnetic-field pattern to have different relative amounts of spatial overlap between optical beams corresponding to at least one pair of optical ports of the array of optical ports.