Hewlett-packard Company

Steven A Newton

Wayne V Sorin

William R Trutna, Jr

Moshe Nazarathy

Scott H Foster

Shih-Yuan Wang

Douglas Michael Baney

David M Bloom

David K Donald

Tirumala R Ranganath

Ronald V Alves

Frank K David

An optical switch includes a pump source, a pump director, and a pump-dependent attenuator. The pump-dependent attenuator passes optical signals when it is supplied with pump energy at a pumping wavelength and attenuates optical signals when it is not supplied with pump energy. The pump source generates pump energy for the pump-dependent attenuator, and the pump director optically manipulates the delivery of pump energy to the pump-dependent attenuator. In a preferred embodiment, the pump-dependent attenuator is an erbium-doped fiber (EDF), the pump source is a laser diode, and the pump director is a tunable fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The EDF is located along an optical signal transmission path between an input waveguide and an output waveguide. The tunable FBG is located along a transmission path between the laser diode and the EDF. To operate the switch, pump energy at a pumping wavelength is generated by the laser diode and transmitted toward the tunable FBG. To turn on the switch, the FBG is tuned off of the pumping wavelength of the EDF, thereby passing pump energy to the EDF, and to turn off the switch, the FBG is tuned onto the pumping wavelength of the EDF, thereby blocking pump energy to the EDF. An adjustable bandpass filter may also be used as the pump director. The optical switch can also be applied to various optical systems, such as a 1.times.N switch, add/drop multiplexers, broadcast/multicast switches, and wavelength-selectable lasers.

Pump directed optical switching element

An apparatus and method for measuring the thickness of a film having top and bottom surfaces. The apparatus includes a first coupler for generating a first probe light signal and a second probe light signal from a low coherence light source. The first probe light signal is directed toward the top surface of the film and the light leaving the top surface of the film is collected. Similarly, the second probe light signal is directed toward the bottom surface of the film and the light leaving the bottom surface of the film is also collected. Top and bottom partially reflecting reference surfaces are provided for generating reflections. The top reference surface reflects part of the light leaving the top surface back toward the top surface, and the bottom reference surface reflects light leaving the bottom surface of the film back toward the bottom surface of the film. The collected light is combined to form a collected light signal which is input to a receiver that determines the time delay between light reflected from the top surface of the film and the top reference surface and between the bottom surface of the film and the bottom reference surface. In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the receiver is constructed from an optical autocorrelator or an optical spectrum analyzer that includes circuitry for providing the Fourier transform of the frequency domain spectrum measured from the collected light signal.

Method and apparatus for measuring the thickness of a film using low

An optical time domain reflectometer that injects at least two complementary code sequences into an optical fiber and detects the return signal produced by each of these code sequences. These return signals are processed to extract the function h.sub.k that is equal to the response function for the fiber when a single pulse is injected into the fiber. This processing utilizes a correlation scheme that has no sidelobe distortion. Various combinations of Golay codes are suitable for use as the complementary codes.

Spread spectrum optical time domain reflectometer

A method of dynamically changing the measurement window and operating parameters of the instrument, based on intermediate results, in order to minimize the total time required to make a complete measurement. Also, a method of combining partial results from subwindows into a final result to be displayed that has not been corrupted by variation in system response due to time-varying operating parameters.

Adaptive selection of OTDR test parameters and the fusion of data taken

A parametric photodiode amplifier suitable for detecting light of frequency f and intensity P and having intersecting I:V curves for zero incident light and for incident light of intensity P. These photodiodes typically have an intrinsic density of carriers that is on the order of or less than the density of carriers produced by incident light of intensity P. When the photodiode is biased by an LO signal and is illuminated with modulated light of carrier frequency f, the photodiode output signal contains IF components at the difference between the frequencies of the modulation signal and the frequencies of on the order of the 23 lower harmonics of the LO signal.

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Belmont, CA, United States of America

Steven A Newton