Agere Systems Inc.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Jds Uniphase Corporation

Agere Systems Guardian Corp.

At+t Corp.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Stephen A O'Brien

Robert J Lang

Mehrdad Ziari

John William Stayt, Jr

Scott L Broutin

Edward C Vail

Robert Louis Hartman

Richard Bendicks Bylsma

Julian S Osinski

Lars E Eng

Mats Hagberg

Mark A Johnson

Michael Alexandrovich

Bradley T Wyman

A stepped etalon having a top surface and two bottom surfaces that are parallel to the top surface and are each positioned at different distances from the top surface. Each bottom surface has an edge, wherein the edges face one another and a sloping step is positioned between the two edges so that rays from a beam of light projected onto the top surface of the etalon strike the step at the Brewster angle and pass through the etalon without any light being reflected back therein.

Fabry-perot stepped etalon with improved transmittance characteristics

An improved stepped etalon comprises a transparent body having a stepped surface. The lands of the steps are separated by a non-abrupt or softened transition region. This reduces the diffraction of light caused by the step transitions, thereby reducing the dead spot behind the step transition portions where interference prevents accurate measurements of light transmission from being made. Methods for producing a smoothly stepped etalon and for smoothing the step transitions in an abruptly stepped etalon are also disclosed.

Stepped etalon

A multi-wavelength etalon comprises at least two regions with different indices of refraction. The change in refractive index alters the wavelengths of incident light, and thus the number of wavelengths between the reflective surfaces of the etalon, and therefore the etalon's transmission characteristics. By selecting specific indices of refraction, an etalon can be provided which produces peaks and troughs at preselected wavelengths in each region. The transition between two adjacent regions with different indices of refraction can be graded to reduce optical interference which may result from an abrupt transition.

Multi-wavelength etalon

A speech recognition system front end interface to provide a subscriber voice control over many voice mail functions. The speech recognition system converts spoken instructions into DTMF instructions for voice mail systems while allowing prompts form the voice mail system and DTMF tones from the subscriber to pass through without any interference by the speech recognition system. To accomplish these pass through functions, the speech recognition system sets up what is know as a hairpin connection between the subscriber, the speech recognition system and the voice mail system.

Speech recognition front end controller to voice mail systems

A laser module characterization apparatus and method, the apparatus controlled by a computer, the apparatus having a laser module, an internal etalon transducer, an external etalon, and an external etalon transducer. The laser module comprising a laser source substantially simultaneously emitting a pair of substantially identical beams of light and an internal etalon adapted to receive a first of the pair of beams of light and to permit a portion of the first beam to pass through the internal etalon. The internal etalon transducer connected to the computer and responsive to the portion of the first beam. The external etalon adapted to receive a second of the pair of beams of light and to permit a portion of the second beam to pass through the external etalon. The external etalon transducer connected to the computer and responsive to the portion of the second beam.

Method and apparatus for characterizing laser modules

High power semiconductor lasers for pumping fiber devices, such as fiber amplifiers and fiber lasers, include an optical gain region disposed between a rear end and the output end, the width of the optical gain region being greater at the output end than at the rear end. The optical gain region may include a single mode channel region coupled to a flared amplifier region. The light output from the laser is coupled via a lens system into a fiber for propagating to the fiber device to be pumped. Light is fedback into the laser, for example from a fiber Bragg grating, to induce the laser to operate in coherence collapse. The broad bandwidth output associated with coherence collapse permits the laser to deliver high optical powers into the fiber without the onset of stimulated Billion scattering. Fiber grating feedback improves the quality of the beam output by the laser, thus enhancing coupling efficiency into the fiber. The pump laser may be used to pump multiple fiber devices. Multiple pump lasers may be combined together.

Fiber grating-stabilized, semiconductor pump source

A light emitting device, such as semiconductor laser diodes, superluminescent devices, semiconductor amplifiers and polymer-based light emitting devices, is provided with a coating that will increase the thermal conductivity at one or more facets of the device to provide for lowering the facet temperature during device operation to suppress the occurrence of temperature dependent facet degrading mechanisms and the catastrophic optical damage (COD) level of the light emitting device since these facet attributes are directly affected by temperature at the facet. In the preferred embodiment, the coating should have a thermal conductivity that is higher than the material of the light emitting device. The high thermal conductivity coating provides for an efficient transfer of heat away from the beam emission area of the front facet into regions adjacent to, i.e., above or below the active region of the device, such as layers of the device underlying the active region and the device substrate. If the coating material does not provide a sufficiently high level of thermal conductivity, then thermal resistance should be taken into consideration and the coating should be made thicker to achieve lower thermal resistance and, therefore, higher heat spreading toward lowering the facet temperature. In either case, the rate of heat transfer from the facet is enhanced so that the onset of higher temperature dependent facet degrading mechanisms and COD developing at the device facet are reduced or suppressed.

Thermally conductive coatings for light emitting devices

A semiconductor device is provided with at least two photodetectors and an interposed etalon. Signals from the photodetectors may be compared to generate a control signal. The control signal may be used for wavelength control and/or stabilization and for other purposes. According to a preferred embodiment, the etalon is formed of at least two distributed Bragg reflectors. The etalon provides high discrimination power. In addition, the etalon has a periodic discrimination function that may be matched to the periodic channels of a dense wavelength division multiplexing system. According to one aspect of the invention, electrical current may be applied to selected layers of the device to tune and/or shift the response of the device. If desired, the invention may be incorporated into a waveguide structure, such as an optical fiber. The present invention also relates to a wafer fusion technique for making integrated devices.

Semiconductor etalon device, optical control system and method

An improved stepped etalon comprises a transparent body having a stepped surface. Adjacent step lands are separated from each other by a transition region which includes a curved, waved, or otherwise varied step wall such that the average height of the stepped surface does not change abruptly in the transition region from the height of one land to another, but instead varies gradually according to the particular shape of the step wall. In an alternative embodiment, the step transition is formed using a grey-scale or half-tone patterning in which the average height gradually varies across the transition region. The non-planar transition region reduces the amount of coherent interference caused by the step transition thereby reducing the dead spot behind the step transition portions where interference prevents accurate measurements of light transmission from being made.

A method and apparatus for establishing a telecommunications call connection in response to a phrase uttered by a caller. Data for the caller is stored in a data base shared by a plurality of switching systems. The data comprises a plurality of phoneme strings, each phoneme string corresponding to the phonemes for a phrase uttered by the customer during the training phase and a telephone number corresponding to the utterance. When the caller subsequently uses the service his/her utterance at the time of use is compared to the phoneme strings stored for that customer to establish the best match and thereby identify the telephone number.

Voice telephone dialing architecture

An arrangement providing voice activated prompt interrupt for a voice messaging system. The exemplary apparatus includes a telephone line interface, a memory device, a processor, a prompting device and a recording device. Once a call is established at the interface, the processor causes the prompt to be played and simultaneously the incoming signal to be sampled. An echo estimate is determined, subtracted from the incoming signal and a determination is made if incoming speech is detected. If incoming speech is detected, the prompt is stopped and the buffered incoming signal is directed to the recording device.

Growing community of inventors

Naperville, IL, United States of America

Stephen A O'Brien