Optical Time-Switching Systems

Harvard Scott Hinton, Utah State University

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Originally published by The Royal Society.

Abstract

Within recent years there has been a significant amount of interest in applying the new and developing photonics technology for telecommunications switching. As the transmission plant has converted its facilities to fibre there is an economic interest in completing the optical path through the switching system to the terminal facilities without requiring optical-to-electrical conversions. This paper reviews some of the proposed switching systems that use time-multiplexed switching and discusses how, and if, they could fit into current telecommunications networks.