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:
May. 12, 1998
Filed:
Jun. 09, 1997
Krishna Bala, Eatontown, NJ (US);
Charles Arthur Brackett, Mendham, NJ (US);
Ghie Hugh Song, Kwangju, KR;
Bell Communications Research, Inc., Morristown, NJ (US);
Abstract
A horizontally asymmetrically dilated optical switch comprising multiple stages of 2.times.2 optical switching units, especially electro-optic switching units such as acousto-optical tunable filters (AOTFs), which are electrically switchable between a bar state and a cross state to route and switch an optical signal through the switch. The switch is dilated that is, the switching units have an unused input or output so as to dump crosstalk terms into unused outputs. According to the invention, the interconnections between the switching units and their control are such that any optical signal and any crosstalk path passes through equal numbers of bar-state switches and of cross-state switches. Thereby, two advantages are gained. First, no switching path is transparent to a wide bandwidth so that noise cannot recirculate in an amplifying path and go into oscillation. Also, if one state or the other produces greater crosstalk, along no switching path is the larger term accumulated more than the smaller term.