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AssigneeOclaro (North America), Inc.
InventorsMark Summa, Peter Gerard Wigley, Aravanan Gurusami, Ghang-Ho Lee, Douglas Lleweilyn Butler, Robert David Paul Ridding, Timothy Kent Zahnley
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Described is a method for designing individual stages of a multiple cascaded etalon TDC device to allow continuous thermo-optic tuning over a desired range without inducing incremental signal distortion due to uncontrolled and unpredictable dispersion of the TDC during tuning. This allows the signal to transmit without encountering periods of incremental distortion or dark spots. The method includes prior knowledge of each etalon stage, after full assembly, for spectral group delay profile as a function of temperature through modeling and/or characterization. Characterization can account for performance variations that are due to allowed manufacturing tolerances.
Method for tuning a multistage etalon tunable dispersion device (TDC) wherein the TDC comprises at least two etalon stages and wherein the etalon stages comprise a twin cavity of an FP etalon and a GT etalon and the heating device is adjacent to the GT etalon the method comprising the steps of transmitting an optical signal through the TDC while controlling the temperature of each etalon stage at a first temperature, then changing the temperature of at least some of the stages to a second temperature to produce a temperature change and a dispersion change, wherein the temperature change is caused by a adjusting separate heating devices for each etalon stage and occurs over a time period D, and wherein during time period D the temperature change is continuous and monotonic, the dispersion change is continuous and monotonic, and the optical signal does not go through periods of incremental impaired quality.
Method for tuning a multistage etalon tunable dispersion device (TDC) wherein the TDC comprises at least two etalon stages, the method comprising the steps of controlling the temperature of each etalon stage at a first temperature, then changing the temperature of at least some of the stages to a second temperature to change the dispersion of the device from a first dispersion value to a second dispersion value, wherein each temperature change is monotonic, and wherein the TDC is the product of a method of characterizing the surface reflectivity, cavity free spectral range (FSR), and group delay offset and slope of each etalon stage as a function of wavelength and temperature over one or more free spectral ranges, and correlating the resulting data with a series of target dispersion values.
Method for tuning a multistage etalon tunable dispersion compensator (TDC) wherein the TDC comprises at least two etalon stages, the method comprising the steps of transmitting an optical signal through the TDC while controlling the temperature of each etalon stage at a first temperature, then changing the temperature of at least some of the stages to a second temperature to produce a temperature change and a dispersion change, wherein the temperature change occurs over a time period D, and wherein during time period D the temperature change is continuous and monotonic, the dispersion change is continuous and monotonic, and the optical signal does not go through periods of incremental impaired quality, and wherein the TDC is the product of a method of characterizing the surface reflectivity, cavity free spectral range (FSR), and group delay offset and slope of each etalon stage as a function of wavelength and temperature over one or more free spectral ranges, and correlating the resulting data with a series of target dispersion values.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.