Optical fiber bendable coupler/switch device
AssigneeCorning Incorporated
InventorsDonald B. Keck, Mark A. Newhouse, David L. Weidman
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Abstract
A 1.times.N fiber optic switch is disclosed for selectively coupling light from a first fiber to any one of a plurality of output fibers. The switch includes a coupler in which the first optical fiber and the plurality of optical fibers are elongated in a narrowed coupling region. The coupling region can be bent in various directions to cause the radius of curvature of the input fiber to differ from that of at least one of the output fibers, whereby light propagating in the input fiber can be coupled to only one of the output fibers or to more than one of those fibers.
Claims20
A fiber optic device comprising
- a coupler having at least a first optical fiber and a plurality of optical fibers, portions of said plurality of fibers being situated adjacent a portion of said first fiber in a narrowed region where said fibers are elongated and said plurality of fibers are optically coupled with said first optical fiber, and
- means for changing the propagation constant of each of said plurality of fibers with respect to the propagation constant of said first fiber to vary the amount of light coupled from said first fiber to any of said plurality of fibers.
A fiber device comprising
- a coupler having at least a first optical fiber and a plurality of optical fibers, portions of said plurality of fibers being situated adjacent a portion of said first fiber in a narrowed region where the mode field of said first fiber overlaps the mode fields of said plurality of fibers, and
- means for bending said coupler at said narrowed region to couple an optical signal from said first fiber to any one of said plurality of fibers at a given insertion loss, the insertion loss between said first fiber and the remaining of said plurality of fibers being at least 10 dB greater than said given insertion loss.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.