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. 02, 1999
Filed:
Aug. 29, 1997
Timothy Edward Clark, Lisle, IL (US);
Donald W Duda, Williams Bay, WI (US);
Amphenol Corporation, Wallingford, CT (US);
Abstract
A multiple channel fiber optic multiplexer, demultiplexer, multiplexer/demultiplexer, and/or add/drop component includes a plurality of Mach-Zehnder interferometer units, each unit including a pair of 50/50 fiber optic couplers connected by a pair of Bragg gratings and three functional ports including two multi-channel input output ports, one single channel input/output port, the Bragg gratings being tuned to a wavelength of the single channel input/output port, and input/output ports of adjacent interferometer units being connected to each other by fusion splices in a cascade configuration, the component including a first common input/output connector on a first of said cascaded interferometer units and a second common input/output connector on a last of said cascaded interferometer units, with the second common input/output connector being arranged to permit the addition of add-on multi-channel components. The cascaded components, which can be uni-directional or bi-directional, can be connected to each other as serial add-on units, or in the case of modular uni-directional components, be used to upgrade existing NWDM systems to DWDM systems having a greater number of channels by utilizing the existing NWDM components as combiners to connect the cascaded uni-directional components in parallel.