To provide an expandable optical switch which is applied to an optical switch for switching optical paths, relaxes stringent requirements of a conventional optical element and driving device in the accuracy of machining, positioning and angle, and is also suitable for a large scale switch.
In a typical embodiment, the expandable optical switch is provided with: a fixed reflection element which is disposed at each grid section of an M x N matrix and varies the angle of the optical path; one or more movable optical units composed of one or more optical path parallel shift elements having at least one pair of parallel faces; M pieces of input collimators at an input section; N pieces of collimators at an output section; M pieces of input opposite collimators opposite to the input collimators; and N pieces of output opposite collimators opposite to the output collimators. The optical paths are switched by moving the movable optical units into and from the optical paths while the units are moved to the predetermined grid sections by the driving device.
HARASE KENTARO
KAWAI YOSHIO
OPTOHUB KK
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