Optical Quasi-Circulator Using Power Couplers and Optical Amplifiers

Author

Saavedra, Carlos E. ; Ho, Stanley S K

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Queen´´s Univ., Kingston, ON, Canada

Volume

22

Issue

9

fYear

2010

fDate

5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

604

Lastpage

606

Abstract

A new concept for an optical quasi-circulator operating in the 1550-nm band is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this letter. The quasi-circulator consists of two power couplers, two optical amplifiers, and a pair of attenuators. The power splitters are connected back-to-back and have a high split ratio of 98 : 2. The amplifiers are used as directional devices to block reverse energy flow from Port 2 to Port 1 as well as from Port 3 to Port 2 in the quasi-circulator. The attenuators are used for overall system gain control. Measurements show an insertion loss close to 0 dB in the forward directions from Port 1 to Port 2 and from Port 2 to Port 3.

Keywords

amplifiers; optical beam splitters; optical circulators; optical directional couplers; optical losses; attenuators; directional devices; forward direction; insertion loss; optical amplifiers; optical quasicirculator; power couplers; power splitters; split ratio; system gain control; Active circulator; optical circulator; optical quasi-circulator; photonic integrated circuits (PICs);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2010.2043250

Filename

5419102