OPTICAL CHANNEL COMMUTATOR Russian patent published in 1996 - IPC

FIELD: optical processing of information. SUBSTANCE: commutator has light plane of polarization controlled modulators 3 and 4, two polarization-sensitive cubes 5 and 6 (7 and 8), three quarter-wave plates with reflecting members. All the units are mounted inside each pair of input and output channels 1 and 2, which are connected optically. There is half-wave plate 9 being common for both channels. Commutator also has control unit 10. Device may be used when building small-sized multistage optical-electron commutators for highly productive multi-user systems for transmission and reception of great-scale data files. EFFECT: improved efficiency of operation. 2 dwg