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US 5,920,411 AGranted
Optical multiplexing/demultiplexing device
OwnerGary S. Duck, Yihao Chenginventors
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An optical multiplexing/demultiplexing device has a plurality of optical ports along a cascading optical path with wavelength-specific filters disposed at the ports. The filters are selected to form groups of at least two virtually identical filters. At least one "add" connection is provided for admitting a selected band into the optical path, the connection being disposed at a second or consecutive (third, fourth etc . . . ) filter of the same wavelength as the band being added. The device uses a single medium for processing optical signals, e.g. a single polygonal optical block or air.
Claims17
A multiplexing/demultiplexing optical device which comprises:
- a structure having at least an input port transparent to and disposed to receive a multiple-wavelength optical signal and at least three further sequential ports arranged in a spaced relationship to each other, said at least input port and said at least three further ports defining a serial, cascaded, unguided, multi-point optical path,
- multi-layer interference optical filters arranged serially at said at least three further sequential ports along said unguided optical path, at least two of said multi-layer interference filters for at least twice filtering a predetermined wavelength of the multiple-wavelength optical signal prior to allowing a remaining portion of said multiple-wavelength optical signal to continue along the unguided multi-point optical path to another of said multi-layer interference filters for filtering another predetermined wavelength of the multiple-wavelength optical signal.
A multiplexing/demultiplexing optical device comprising:
- a structure comprising an input port and at least two output ports being arranged along an unguided multi-point optical path for at least partially demultiplexing a multiple-wavelength optical signal;
- at least two optical filters, each disposed at one of the at least two output ports, each of the at least two filters having a same output response, in tandem, the at least two filters for twice filtering a first signal of the multiple-wavelength optical signal having a predetermined centre wavelength, a first of the at least two filters disposed to filter the first signal and provide it to its respective output port, a second of the at least two filters disposed to filter a remaining portion of the first signal and to provide it to its respective output port.
A multiplexing/demultiplexing device comprising:
- a structure comprising an input port;
- the structure comprising at least a first port disposed to receive an optical signal from the input port and at least a first multi-layer interference optical filter at the first port, said first multi-layer interference optical filter disposed at said first port for filtering and passing out of the first port a first channel having a first center wavelength of light of a multiple-wavelength multiple channel optical signal, the first multi-layer interference optical filter being transparent to the first center wavelength of light of the multiple-wavelength optical signal and reflective to at least another wavelength of light corresponding to another channel thereof;
- the structure comprising at least a second port and at least a second multi-layer interference optical filter having same optical filtering characteristics as the first filter, said second multi-layer interference optical filter disposed at said second port for filtering and passing out of the second port the substantially same first wavelength of light of the multiple-wavelength optical signal which was not sufficiently filtered by the first multi-layer interference optical filter and was reflected with a remaining portion of the multiple-wavelength optical signal, the second multi-layer interference optical filter being transparent to the substantially same first wavelength of light of the multiple-wavelength optical signal and reflective to at least another wavelength thereof, said second port and said second multi-layer interference optical filter being disposed in a sequential manner so as to receive the remaining portion of the multiple wavelength optical signal that is sequentially transmitted from the input port to the first port, from the first port to the first multi-layer interference optical filter, from the first multi-layer interference optical filter to the second port and from the second port to the second multi-layer interference optical filter.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.