Distributed optical passive star couplers

A technique is presented by which a single centralized passive star coupler in an optical star network is replaced by a distributed one. This is done by partitioning the star coupler into numerous pieces and placing them at the network nodes. Such a placement results in a great saving in the number of fibers required to build the star network. In addition to this saving, the problems associated with constructing a large single N*N star coupler are bypassed.<
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