All-optical switches
The highly reliable piezoelectric DirectLight™ beam-steering technology from POLATIS sets the industry standard for lowest optical loss and highest performance. With more than a billion port-hours accumulated on deployed units, the POLATIS technology platform delivers a broad range of class-leading all-optical matrix switch products into demanding applications. At the core of POLATIS optical switches is our patented DirectLight beam-steering technology that makes connections using compact piezoelectric actuators to align collimated beams of light from opposing arrays of input and output fibers with minimal loss, distortion or interference between paths. Alignment is maintained using feedback from integrated position sensors to ensure connection stability over time, temperature and external disturbances. Switching occurs completely independently of the power level, colour or direction of light on the path, enabling pre-provisioning of dark fiber and avoiding concatenation of switching delays across mesh or multi-stage switched optical networks. POLATIS optical switches are fully non-blocking and available in sizes from 8x8 to 576x576.