Multiwavelength Bidirectional Coupler-Decouplers

摘要

This is an exploratory program to develop, fabricate and test a family of active and passive, single and two-fiber, fiber optic multiwavelength, bidirectional, coupler-decoupler modules. The goal of the contract is to have each member of the coupler-decoupler (multiplexer-demultiplexer) family be capable of coupling energy into, and decoupling energy out of, a single optical transmission line using a minimum of four wavelengths for the simultaneous full duplex transmission of a minimum of four optical channels. The coupler-decoupler will be designed for low throughput loss (<5 dB per channel, per single pass) and minimum crosstalk (no more than -35 dB of the received optical signal). The modules fabricated during the program will be evaluated for their ability to meet military environmental requirements, particularly with respect to temperature. The approach uses the miniature planar Rowland spectrometer configuration recently developed at Hughes Research Laboratories (HRL) for NASA as the basic building block for constructing the coupler-decoupler required for this program, eliminating the need for collimating optics, prisms, or thin-film filters.