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:
Jun. 14, 1988
Filed:
Jun. 13, 1985
Kjell Blotekjaer, Trondheim, NO;
The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford, CA (US);
Abstract
A fiber optic coupler comprises a multimode fiber bus, an input branch fiber, and an output branch fiber. Coupling between the fibers is accomplished by means of a reflector, disposed in the core of the multimode optical fiber. The reflector is quite small, such that only a small fraction of the light propagating in the multimode fiber is incident thereon. The incident light is reflected towards the output branch fiber and coupled thereto through a lens. Light propagating in the input branch fiber towards the multimode fiber is focused on the reflector by means of a lens. The reflector is oriented to reflect the focused light in a generally cone-shaped beam directed longitudinally down the axis of a multimode fiber. Preferably, the cone-shaped beam diverges so that substantially all the modes within the acceptance cone of the multimode fiber are excited. Such excitation of the modes is preferably equalized by selecting the numerical aperture of the multimode fiber such that only the portion of the reflected beam which has a relatively uniform intensity is within the acceptance cone of the fiber. The invention is particularly advantageous for local area networks and distributed sensor systems.