Apple Inc.

Avago Technologies General IP (singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Foxconn Interconnect Technology Limited

Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Avago Technologies Ecbu IP (singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited

Omid Momtahan

Tong Chen

Mehmet Mutlu

Mark T Winkler

Michael John Brosnan

Wenrui Cai

Orit A Shamir

Giovanni Gozzini

Prashanth S Holenarsipur

Michael K McCord

Paul Yu

Chau H Nguyen

Andrew Engel

Poorya Saghari

Laurence Ray McColloch

Li Ding

Alaa Adel Mahdi Hayder

David Meadowcroft

Aliasghar Eftekhar

Venkata Satish Kumar Vangala

Klaus Giessler

Julie Elizabeth Fouquet

Ye Chen

David J K Meadowcroft

Richard Yeh

Bing Shao

Miaolei Yan

Klaus D Giessler

Jared D Stack

Jung Gao

Waruna Fernando

A sensor system includes a self-mixing interferometry sensor; a drive circuit configured to apply a modulated drive signal to an input of the self-mixing interferometry sensor; a mixer circuit configured to mix a modulated output of the self-mixing interferometry sensor with a local oscillator signal that is orthogonal to the modulated drive signal over a period of time; an integrator circuit configured to integrate an output of the mixer circuit over the period of time; and a processor configured to determine, using an output of the integrator circuit, at least one of a round-trip propagation time of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the self-mixing interferometry sensor and reflected back into the self-mixing interferometry sensor by an object or medium, or a velocity of the object or medium.

Self-interferometry based sensor systems capable of generating depth maps or velocity maps

Disclosed herein are electronic devices having touch input surfaces. A user's touch input or press on the touch input surface is detected using a set of lasers, such as vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) that emit beams of light toward the touch input surface. The user's touch causes changes in the self-mixing interference within the VCSEL of the emitted light with reflected light, such as from the touch input surface. Deflection and movement (e.g., drag motion) of the user's touch is determined from detected changes in the VCSELs' operation due to the self-mixing interference.

Self-mixing interference based sensors for characterizing touch input

An optical communication system comprises a plurality of linked single-wavelength coherent optical transceivers configured to communicate via short-reach data-center links at a common reference wavelength, each transceiver including a single single-wavelength laser source that is used to produce a source beam at a source beam wavelength, the source beam being used to produce transmit beams sent by the transceiver and for mixing with one or more receive beams received by the transceiver; wherein each of the transceivers includes a thermo-electric cooler configured to control a temperature of the single-wavelength laser source around a temperature setpoint that locks the source beam wavelength to the common reference wavelength; wherein each transceiver includes a wavelength deviation detector configured to detect a wavelength deviation between the source beam wavelength and the wavelength or wavelengths of the one or more receive beams or between the source beam wavelength and the common reference wavelength, wherein the wavelength deviation detector is configured to detect a threshold amount of wavelength deviation that is indicative that the single-wavelength laser source is problematic or a single-wavelength laser source of a separate transceiver coupled to send the one or more receive beams is problematic, wherein each transceiver is configured to indicate the wavelength deviation or problematic characteristic in order to identify problematic laser sources and thereby prevent the linked network of transceivers from communicating at a linked network wavelength that is marginal or out-of-range in relation to the common reference wavelength.

Laser-shared coherent transceivers and methods

An optical transceiver includes a built-in optical switch to switch between diverse fiber paths in switches in a datacenter or in switches between two datacenters. The built-in optical switch can be used to switch between racks in a datacenter to increase capacity for any rack that requests it. A controller, which receives a signal from a server computer in one of the racks, can be external to the optical transceiver or within the optical transceiver. In either case, the server computer can be provided with additional bandwidth when needed. For connections between datacenters, the built-in optical switch allows for optical line protection, but without the need for a splitter circuit, which incurs a significant power loss and requires a more expensive transceiver. Consequently, the built-in optical switch within an optical transceiver can be used in a variety of contexts to increase efficiency and reduce overall costs for network devices.

Optical transceiver

A directional free-space optical communication system includes a source device including a laser diode and an endpoint device including a photodiode. The endpoint device also includes an optical structure, such as an optical adapter, that increases both angular and spatial offset tolerance between the two source device and the endpoint device.

Optical structures in directional free-space optical communication systems for portable electronic devices

Disclosed herein are structures, devices, and systems for detecting touch and force inputs at multiple sensing locations on a surface of an electronic device using waveguide-based interferometry. A laser light source, such as a VCSEL, inserts light into a waveguide positioned adjacent to the sensing locations, and an input at a sensing location alters the inserted light in the waveguide allowing for determination of the input's touch or force at the sensing location. Wavelength modulation of the inserted light allows isolation in frequency of the signals from each sensing location. Optical phase locking can be used to lock an absolute distance beat frequency corresponding to a stationary reference point in the waveguide.

Waveguide-based interferometric multi-point/distributed force and touch sensors

An apparatus for particulate matter (PM) measurement includes a first light source to generate a first light beam and a second light source disposed at a first distance from the first light source to generate a second light beam in parallel to the first light beam to illuminate a PM. The apparatus further includes a first light detector to measure a first timing corresponding to a first self-mixing signal resulting from a reflection and/or back-scattering of the first light beam from a PM, and a second light detector to measure a second timing corresponding to a second self-mixing signal resulting from a reflection and/or back-scattering of the second light beam from the PM. A processor can determine a first velocity of the PM based on a spatial separation between centers of the first light beam and the second light beam and a temporal separation between the first timing and the second timing.

Particulate matter velocity measurement and size estimation using parallel self-mixing sensing

Configuration and operation of array of self-mixing interferometry sensors

A directional free-space optical communication system includes a source device including a laser diode and an endpoint device including a photodiode. The endpoint device and the source device also include an adjustable optics subsystem that increases both angular and positional offset tolerance between the source device and the endpoint device.

Systems and methods for adjusting movable lenses in directional free-space optical communication systems for portable electronic devices

Information from optical modules can be combined with information from network switches to help detect and pinpoint problems along a network communications path. A control path between a network switch and a microcontroller of an optical module can be used to obtain monitoring and debugging data from a digital signal processor (DSP) of the optical module. The DSP data can be used with performance data from the network switch to separately determine the health of the electrical and optical sections of the communications link. The ability to pinpoint problems with the communications link enables appropriate remedial actions to be determined and taken automatically.

Distributed network diagnostics

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Omid Momtahan