How Optical Switches Work

The new generation of multi-service access transmission platform consists of optical switch, power board, main control board and I/O service board.

The main function of the optical switch is to provide signal interconnection between the power supply board, the main control board and the I/O service board. The platform uses a modular chassis. The chassis has 2 dedicated slots for power boards, 2 dedicated slots for main control boards, and 6 general slots for I/O business boards.

The optical switch needs to be inserted into the two dedicated slots of the power board to provide working power to various types of plug-in cards of the platform. AC power board or DC power board can be selected. Any one power board can provide the whole set of working power of the platform. In order to improve the reliability of the equipment, the platform can also be equipped with 2 power supply boards to provide 1+1 hot backup, optional 2 AC power supply boards or 2 DC power supply boards or a mixture of 1 AC power supply board and 1 DC power supply board use.

The optical switch needs to be inserted into the two dedicated slots of the main control board. It mainly completes the aggregation, crossover, configuration and transmission of the business signals of each I/O board, and can also provide the device network management monitoring function. Each main control board has 2 optical fiber interfaces and 3 Ethernet interfaces. It can form SDH optical ring network, IP optical ring network or dual optical port 1+1 protection through 2 optical fiber interfaces, and can also set the Ethernet interface as a transmission link interface, and transmit through IP link. In order to improve the reliability of the equipment, this platform can also choose 2 main control boards to provide 1+1 hot backup, or choose a single main control board to work independently.

The I/O service board needs to be inserted into the 6 common slots of the I/O service board. Optional: STM-1 interface board, STM-4 interface board, E1 interface board, FE interface board, voice interface board, audio/E&M Interface boards, low-rate data interface boards, etc. The selected I/O service boards are uniformly connected to various types of service signals to realize end-to-end communication functions.