Patent 7499650 was granted and assigned to University of Electronic Science and Technology of China on March, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A multiple-plane OBS node comprises N input ports, N 1×N switches, N switching planes, N2 FDLs, N optical couplers, and N output ports, each input port is connected with the input of a corresponding 1×N switches, the N outputs of each 1×N switch are connected with a corresponding input of each switching plane respectively, a corresponding output of each switching plane is connected with the input of the same corresponding optical coupler via a respective FDL, and each output port is connected with the output of a corresponding optical coupler, wherein N is an integer.