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. 24, 2002
Filed:
Nov. 20, 2000
Gan Zhou, Plano, TX (US);
Kuang-Yi Wu, Plano, TX (US);
Sihan Lin, Lewisville, TX (US);
Ding Wang, Dallas, TX (US);
Chorum Technologies LP, Richardson, TX (US);
Abstract
An optical wavelength router separates even and odd optical channels from an input WDM signal. The input beam is first converted into a pair of orthogonally-polarized beams. One of the beams is reflected by a mirror, while the other is reflected by a Fabry-Perot resonator (or etalon). The group delay of the reflected beams is strongly dependent on wavelength. The beams reflected from the resonator and mirror are combined and interfere in a birefringent element (e.g., a beam displacer or polarized beamsplitter) to produce a beam having mixed polarization as a function of wavelength. The polarized components of this beam are separated by a polarization-dependent routing element to produce two output beams containing complementary subsets of the input optical spectrum (e.g., even optical channels are routed to output port A and odd optical channels are routed to output port B).