METHOD FOR SWITCHING NXN OPTICAL CHANNELS AND MULTI-CHANNEL SWITCH

摘要

The invention relates to the information-processing and communications field and can be used for transmitting, receiving and redistributing information signals in switching and coding/decoding devices of telecommunications systems and of fibre-optic and integrated optical communications, information-processing and data computation systems, including on supercomputers. The essence of the invention consists in that, in a multi-channel switch which optically connects any specified optical input channel to any specified optical output channel, a method for switching NN channels is proposed, which method is characterized in that, in each bit, the connections are implemented in parallel, wherein the integration of the channels is controlled optically owing to the photorefractive properties of the material of the optical channels. In order to implement the method, a multi-channel switch is proposed in which signals are transferred from channel to channel by supplying photorefractive waveguides with optical signals of a specified configuration, which can be generated with the aid of a matrix of light emitters and a holographic optical element or an optical mask, which are optically connected with the aid of projection optics.