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:
Sep. 19, 2000
Filed:
Feb. 17, 1998
Martin A Putnam, Fairfax, VA (US);
Michael L Dennis, Alexandria, VA (US);
Irl N Duling, III, Round Hill, VA (US);
E Joseph Friebele, Cheverly, MD (US);
Jin U Kang, Centreville, VA (US);
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a ring laser configuration having a polarizer, and whose cavity loop has substantially no net dispersion, permitting mode locked pulsing of high intensity and large bandwidth. In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a system using this laser to interrogate a plurality of arrays of Bragg gratings by use of both time and wavelength division multiplexing, increasing the total number of interrogatable gratings. In accordance with a third aspect of the invention, a system for interrogating one or more fiber Bragg gratings separated from the optical source by a dispersive optical fiber. As such a grating distends responsive to some measurand, its reflection frequency changes, and the traversal time of the reflection over the dispersive fiber changes, permitting inference of the measurand.