A new switch for fiber-optic lines that can carry data over 2 million times faster than traditional phone lines may be in line to receive a United States patent. The inventor of the acousto-optical switch, Light Management Group Inc. (LMGR--Burlington, Ontario Canada), says that the device will find widespread use in a number of telecommunications, data transmission, and Internet technology applications.
Developed by LMGR's chief engineer Gennadii Ivtsenkov, Ph.D, the switch is intended to form the basis of an optimal fiber-optical line communication network. These optical lines, employing LMGR's proprietary Fiber-Optical Line Commutator, can carry 10 Gbytes/sec of information per second, as compared to 5 kbytes/sec over regular phone lines.
The Commutator has no mechanical parts and uses the electronically and computer controlled acousto-optical deflector set, which randomly connects the channels from the array to the single fiber optic line, resulting in extremely fast switching times of not more than a few microseconds. The commutator can be inverted randomly connecting any single line from the input array with the single output line.
"Until now," notes LMGR CEO Barrington Simon, "the few optical switching devices that have existed before could switch single input with two outputs only, or they all had mechanical rotating parts, worked very slowly, and were not suitable for optical networks. We believe that [the] Fiber-Optical Line Commutator is a most significant advance."
LMGR also is conducting research in a number of communications technologies, including optimized distance transmission, optical switching and routing, and an audiophile speaker system.