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:
Nov. 08, 1994
Filed:
Mar. 05, 1993
Applicant:
Inventors:
Michael C DeJule, Clifton Park, NY (US);
Thomas L Credelle, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Assignee:
General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY (US);
Attorneys:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G02B / ; G02F / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
359117 ; 359128 ; 359245 ; 359251 ;
Abstract
An optical switching device for switching arbitrarily polarized optical signal beams includes a plurality of polarization-independent switching cells arranged in matrix form. Each polarization-independent switching cell is independently controllable to selectively direct received optical beams along at least a selected one of two axes. The device can be three-dimensionally expanded to increase the number of output ports to which the optical beams can be selectively switched, in which case the matrices can share integrally constructed polarization-independent switching cells.