Concept for an optical bus-type interconnection network

A concept for parallel optoelectronic bus-type interconnections (many participants to many participants) is given. Using one single space-invariant multiple beamsplitter for fan-out and for fan-in simultaneously, the energy requirements for communications scale with 2 N (for N participants on each bus-line), which has to be compared with N² for a cascade of separate beamsplitters for fan-out and for fan-in. A simple demonstration experiment with a Dammann-grating as multiple beamsplitter is shown and in a design example the theoretical performance is discussed