The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 26, 1982
Filed:
Jul. 06, 1979
Glen E Miller, Redondo, WA (US);
The Boeing Company, Seattle, WA (US);
Abstract
A digital fiber optic sensor system utilizing a conventional n-track encoder system, but wherein the number of fiber optic paths to and from the sensor is reduced to one or two by utilizing the delay properties of optical fibers. These properties make it possible to divide a single short-duration optical pulse among several optical fibers of differing lengths to produce, at the far ends of the fibers, a like number of short-duration optical pulses essentially identical in shape and amplitude but spaced in time. Each of these fibers can be used to illuminate a different track of a multi-track optical encoder such that the tracks become sequentially interrogated by the time-spaced pulses. When the time-spaced responses are recombined, they form a serial binary word. In effect, a form of time-division multiplexing is achieved with the use of a minimum number of optical fiber elements.