Apparatus capable of operating as interleaver/deinterleavers or filters

Abstract

An apparatus capable of operating as an interleaver, a deinterleaver, a filter, or some combination thereof is described. An optical device that can be configured to multiple different optical components. In one embodiment, the optical device can be configured to operate as a single double-pass interlayer/deinterleaver, as two single-pass interleaver/deinterleavers, or as one or more filters. In one embodiment, the optical device has ports on two or more planes and a birefringent element that occupies the two or more planes. Connections between the two or more planes can be made by walk-off crystals internal to the optical device or between ports by connections that are external to the optical device to configure the optical device.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.