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:
Mar. 09, 1999
Filed:
Dec. 02, 1996
Yuan P Li, Duluth, GA (US);
Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
A dense waveguide division multiplexer (DWDM) is integrated on a single chip with a plurality of tunable attenuators that are connected in series to the output waveguides of the DWDM in order to equalize the power level on the output waveguides. In the preferred embodiment, the attenuators are thermo-optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer (TMZs) with a tunable range of 0 to 6 dB and a response time of approximately 1-10 milliseconds (ms). A heat sink is attached to the back of the chip to dissipate the heat from the TMZs and to reduce thermal crosstalk. In order to achieve a 3 dB loss on one of the output waveguides via the corresponding TMZ attenuator, approximately 0.25 W is required. In an alternative embodiment, the attenuators are variable stress Mach-Zehnder interferometers (VSMZs).