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. 09, 1992
Filed:
Jun. 01, 1990
David W Stowe, Medfield, MA (US);
Michael Corke, Mendon, MA (US);
Aster Corporation, Milford, MA (US);
Abstract
Fiber optic power splitters having a central fiber and a selected number of surrounding fibers spaced periodically around the central fiber and the method of fabricating such splitters are described. For splitters having between three and five surrounding fibers, the central fiber is made to have a reduced diameter relative to the surrounding fibers so that it contacts each of the surrounding fibers and each of the surrounding fibers, likewise, touches each of its neighboring fibers. For splitters having seven or more surrounding fibers, the diameters of the surrounding fibers are reduced relative to the central fiber so that mutual contact is made among the set of equal diameter surrounding fibers and the central fiber. The equation governing the relative diameters of the central and surrounding fibers, and methods of obtaining uniform diameter reduction in an optical fiber are described. Single-mode splitters made according to these means have relatively low variation of splitting fraction with variations of input optical power wavelength and can be made to distribute optical power input in any fiber among, e.g. three to seventeen outputs according to predeterminable relationships. Of particular practical importance, splitters can be made which split one input into four, eight, twelve, or sixteen equal outputs, having a flattened response over a significant wavelength range.