Compact tunable optical wavelength interleaver

US6498680B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Chorum Technologies LP · US

Inventors

• Gan Zhou · Pasadena, US
• Kuang-Yi Wu · Plano, US
• Sihan Lin · Lewisville, US
• Ding Wang · Dallas, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 20, 2000
• Grant date: Dec 24, 2002
• Expiry date: Nov 20, 2020

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y10S359/90
• WIPO field: Optics
• WIPO sector: Instruments

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).