OPTICAL SWITCH AND OPTICAL CROSSCONNECT DEVICE

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an optical crossconnect device having a reduced device scale and provided with expandability. SOLUTION: The optical crossconnect device comprises a first optical switch and a second optical switch each provided with a k input and k output port, a third two-way transmittable optical switch of k inputs and k outputs, 2k pieces of first optical circulators, 2k pieces of second optical circulators and 2k pieces of selection switches, wherein the first to the k-th interfaces are interconnected by the first optical switch, the (k+1)-th to the 2k-th interfaces are interconnected by the second optical switch, and the first to the k-th interfaces are interconnected with any of the (k+1)-th to the 2k-th interfaces by the third optical switch. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT