US 10,225,016 B1Granted

Optical power and chromatic dispersion equalization system

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorsSalman Khaleghi, Emily Abbess, Christopher Rodenchuk, Alaa Adel Mahdi Hayder, Robert Harrison, Matt Connolly

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Wavelength multiplexed optical communication systems include a channeled chromatic dispersion compensator coupled to receive modulated optical beams associated with a plurality of optical channels at respective communication wavelengths. The channeled chromatic dispersion compensator applies independently selected dispersion compensations to each of the optical channels by identifying a dispersion compensation associated with a preferred bit error rate, inter-symbol interference, or other signal quality metric, or determined using optical fiber properties such as dispersion slope and zero dispersion wavelength. Chromatic dispersion compensation can be coupled with channel power equalization, and can be performed at a receiver or a transmitter or in the middle of a fiber span.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A transmitter system for optical fiber communications, comprising:

a plurality of optical transmitters that produce modulated optical beams at respective wavelengths;
a fiber optic multiplexer optically coupled to each of the optical transmitters so as to receive the modulated optical beams from each of the plurality of optical transmitters and produce a combined optical output beam;
a channeled dispersion compensation system comprising an optical switch and a channeled dispersion compensator coupled to the fiber optical multiplexer, wherein the optical switch selects the combined optical output beam or a combined optical input beam comprising modulated optical beams at the respective wavelengths, wherein the channeled dispersion compensator is situated to apply an individually selectable chromatic dispersion compensation to each of the modulated optical beams at the respective wavelengths in the selected optical beam, and produce a combined, dispersion-compensated and power equalized optical beam;
and
a processor coupled to the channeled dispersion compensator and operable to select the individually selectable chromatic dispersion compensations associated with the selected optical beam.

2 more elements

An optical communication network, comprising:

a plurality of transceivers that produce corresponding modulated optical beams, wherein each transceiver has an associated channel wavelength;
an optical multiplexer coupled to the plurality of transceivers so as to couple the modulated optical beams from the plurality of transceivers to a single optical fiber as a combined transmitted beam;
a wavelength monitor;
an optical switch that selects one of the combined transmitted beam or a combined received beam comprising modulated optical beams at the associated channel wavelengths and couples a portion of the selected optical beam to the wavelength monitor;
a processor coupled to the wavelength monitor and configured to select at least one preferred dispersion compensation for the selected optical beam;
and
a channeled chromatic dispersion (CD) compensator coupled to receive the selected optical beam and independently CD compensate portions of the selected optical beam corresponding to each of the modulated optical beams and produce a CD compensated combined optical beam based on the preferred dispersion compensation.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.