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:
Jul. 03, 1984
Filed:
Oct. 27, 1981
Abstract
Disclosed are optical data bus configurations for interconnecting terminals so that any terminal can communicate with any other terminal. It is known to do this by connecting terminals serially using two trunk optical fibers and to connect terminals together in a star configuration using a single transmission star or reflection star. The serial network is limited by optical loss while the star network requires more optical fiber and is more costly. Disclosed is a serial bus which uses six fibers arranged in two groups of 3 each, the groups conducting light in mutually opposite directions. A transmitting means in each terminal is coupled to two of the fibers in each group and terminals adjacent any one terminal are connected to a different two fibers than the one terminal. Another arrangement disclosed uses hybrid reflection-transmission star couplers. Terminals can be connected to reflection ports of the hybrid couplers, while the couplers can be interconnected by the transmission ports thereof. A relatively small number of fibers are required to interconnect a large number of terminals.