OPTICAL PARALLEL-SERIAL CONVERTER AND OPTICAL SERIAL-PARALLEL CONVERTER

The high transmission capacity of an optical transmission path (about 200,000 km Mbit/s) is used, among others, to couple several data sources and data sinks to an optical waveguide. The task of the invention is to ensure the coupling in and out of several data streams to or from any path section of a (predetermined) optical transmission path. This task is fulfilled by a device for the parallelserial conversion, and a device for the serial-parallel conversion of the data streams to the optical transmission path. The coupling in and out of the individual data streams is performed by optical modulators or optical expanders, which are incorporated into the optical transmission path. Several data streams are parallel-serial converted by means of additional incorporated optical time delay elements, which ensure the bit interlacing of the data streams (bit-interleaved).