Electronic signal blanking in optical transceivers

Abstract

A transceiver system allows for simultaneous operation of transmit and receive modes, even in shared path configurations, by temporarily making the receiver insensitive to transmitter energy and by modifying standard readout technology to rapidly dissipate any transmitter energy deposited onto the receiver's detector elements. The entirely electronic technique alerts the receiver to the imminent emission of each transmitter pulse. This alert opens a gate voltage switch in the readout and prevents energy that is present on the detector from being passed to the readout integrator. As soon as the transmitter pulse has passed and any charges it generated on the detector have been dissipated, the switch is automatically closed and the receiver is again fully active. Since this on/off switching happens automatically and rapidly it can operate independently from, and have very little impact on the receiver. Furthermore, it levies absolutely no limitations whatsoever on the operation of the transmitter.