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. 15, 1991
Filed:
Jan. 16, 1991
Andres Albanese, Morristown, NJ (US);
Ronald C Menendez, Chatham, NJ (US);
Bell Communications Research, Inc., Livingston, NJ (US);
Abstract
An optical fiber point-to-multipoint communications network is disclosed of the type having a bus topology. The broadcasting terminal (101) of the network includes an information transmitting laser (102) and a local oscillator laser (103) the signals of which are launched onto opposite ends of an optical fiber bus (104) to counter-propagate thereon. At each of the M stations (105-1-105-M) connected to the bus, a wideband directional coupler (106-1-106-M) couples portions of each of the counter-propagating signals to a balanced coherent detector (107-1-107-M). The effective total power input to the balanced coherent detector at each of the stations is equal regardless of the location of the station relative to the broadcasting terminal. In another embodiment the stations are connected to ring-shaped optical subbuses which are coupled to the main bus. Several two-way point-to-multipoint embodiments are disclosed which employ wavelength division multiplexing techniques to enable communications from the stations back to the broadcasting terminal.