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. 18, 2003
Filed:
Aug. 13, 1999
Osamu Mizuhara, Allentown, PA (US);
Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
Two low-speed electrical signals are first input to two electrical Return-to-Zero (RZ) converters to generate low-speed RZ electrical signals. After inverting one of the low-speed RZ electrical signals, the two low-speed RZ signals are then input to a dual-electrode optical modulator, e.g., a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The dual-electrode optical modulator has a pair of electrodes driven with the pair of differential signals. This dual-electrode optical modulator has multiplexing as well as optical modulating capabilities. Within the dual-electrode optical modulator, each electrode is coupled to a different low-speed RZ electrical signal. The optical modulator also receives an optical beam from a traditional light source, e.g., a laser diode. As the electrodes of the dual-electrode modulator optically modulate independently, they effectively combine the low-speed RZ electrical signals into one Non-Return-To-Zero (NRZ) optical signal by time-division multiplexing the low-speed RZ electrical signals. The resulting output is a high-speed digital optical signal of the desired data rate, which may be greater than 40 Gb/s.