Intel Corporation

Rajesh K Batra

Douglas A Sprock

Robert A Carney

George Pontis

Kenneth P Koller

Ken P Koller

In one embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus operates a control loop for a tunable optical device. A digital reference signal is converted to an analog reference signal and then introduced into the optical path of the tunable optical device. An analog feedback signal, corresponding to the digital reference signal, is recovered from the tunable optical device. The analog feedback signal is converted to a digital feedback signal. The apparatus sends tuning information to the tunable optical device based on analysis of the digital reference signal and the digital feedback signal. In one embodiment, the tuning information is used for wavelength locking of the tunable optical device. In another embodiment, the operation of the control loop is synchronized with another function of the tunable optical device.

Interrupt driven wavelength locking

Tunable laser systems use servo control loops to control and monitor laser parameters such as channel, temperature, and power. The many control loops operate asynchronously, which means that noise generated by input sampling and/or output updating from one or more loops could interfere with the sampled inputs of one or more of the other loops. Embodiments of the present invention synchronize setting and sampling of tunable laser parameters to reduce noise. Noise that is related to synchronized setting and sampling of tunable laser parameters allows the noise to be reduced to constant offsets to be compensated for in the laser parameters of interest.

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East Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Rajesh K Batra