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:
Dec. 21, 1999
Filed:
Sep. 22, 1998
Robert I MacDonald, Manotick, CA;
Jozef Straus, Ottawa, CA;
Other;
Abstract
The present invention relates to an optical logical AND gate comprising an erbium doped waveguide which is attenuating at a signal wavelength and responsive to pump light energy to be transmissive at a signal wavelength. A first laser pump excites a portion of the waveguide. A second laser pump excites a remaining portion of the waveguide. The waveguide is only transparent to transmit a signal if both the first and second pumps excite the waveguide together. The optical AND gate of the present invention can be used as the control element of an N.times.N matrix. A number of first ports and a number of second ports are interconnected by erbium waveguide AND gates. Pump light is switched to a selected first port. Pump light from a second pump is switched to a selected second port. Only the erbium waveguide gate interconnecting the selected first and second port is transmissive to switch a signal. All other gates are attenuating and other signals are accordingly blocked. A single signal can be switched to a selected output or to a number of outputs to achieve a broadcast function. Advantageously, active switch elements are removed from the signal path, and the signal is switched passively. This switch unit is used to advantage in a multiple stage switch architecture.