The Architecture and Strict-Sense Nonblocking Conditions of a New Baseline-Based Optical Switching Network Composed of Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Switching Elements

In this paper, we introduce a new multiplane optical switching fabric structure based on a baseline type switching network. The new structure is built from symmetrical and asymmetrical optical switching elements. This new architecture can be extended to structures of greater size (it means capacity as a number of inputs and outputs). To compare different types of switching architectures, we define the cost of an appropriate structure as the number of its passive and active optical elements. Generally, structure with smallest number of these elements constitutes a cheaper solution. We also introduce a strict-sense nonblocking conditions for the proposed multiplane structure and compare them with an optical baseline multiplane switching networks of the same capacity. We show that for most capacities of the switching network, the new multiplane architecture is a cheaper solution than the multiplane baseline network even when the number of planes in the new architecture is greater than the number of one planes in the baseline structure — cost of the whole new structure expressed as the number of passive and active optical elements is fewer than baseline network of the same capacity.