Lightpath concentrators for all-optical networks

In some deployments of all-optical networks, it is necessary to concentrate the lightpaths from some fibers to fewer fibers. An N/spl times/M lightpath concentrator is an optical component for this purpose, and it concentrates the lightpaths from N incoming fibers to M outgoing fibers. In this paper, three designs of N/spl times/M lightpath concentrators are proposed. The first design is a generalization of optical crossconnects, and it requires M/spl times/M optical switches. The second design incorporates the concept of partial concentration so that it requires only m/spl times/m optical switches (where m