Inter-ring cross-connect for survivable multi-wavelength optical communication networks

Abstract From the Canadian patent

A cross-connect (92) for a multi-ring, multi-channel telecommunications network, especially for a wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical network. Each of the interconnected rings (94 and (100) is self-healing by provision of a redundant counter-rotating ring (96 and 98)) or excess capacity on pairs of counter-rotating rings. Because an interconnect between selfhealing rings (90) does not need to connect working to protection fibers or , similarly redundant fibers, the complexity of the interconnect can be substantially reduced. For several important architectures the interconnect , can be decomposed into one or two 3x3 interconnects. Further a wide-sense non-, blocking 3x3 …