MEMS laser power regulator for optical sensors and networks

Author

Cai, H. ; Zhang, X.M. ; Lu, C. ; Liu, A.Q.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore

fYear

2005

fDate

Oct. 30 2005-Nov. 3 2005

Abstract

This paper reports a micromachined reflective-type MEMS power regulator (PR) for optical networks. The PR consists of an improvingly designed variable optical attenuator (VOA), which has superior performance as compared with the conventional flat-mirror reflection-type and shutter-type VOAs. It uses an elliptical mirror as the movable reflector. It achieves a large attenuation range at low insertion loss and low voltage. More importantly, it uses only normal fibers as the input and output, and the attenuation increases nearly linearly with the mirror displacement. The improved reflective-type VOA obtains a 44 dB tuning range at an insertion loss of 0.7 dB. At 20 dB attenuation level, the wavelength dependent loss (WDL) is 1.0 dB for 100nm (1520 nm ~ 1620 nm) wavelength range, and the polarization dependent loss (PDL) is 0.3 dB

Keywords

micro-optics; micromachining; microsensors; mirrors; optical attenuators; optical sensors; 0.3 dB; 0.7 dB; 1 dB; 1520 to 1620 nm; MEMS; elliptical mirror; flat-mirror reflection-type VOA; laser power regulator; movable reflector; optical networks; optical sensors; polarization dependent loss; shutter-type VOA; variable optical attenuator; wavelength dependent loss; Attenuation; Insertion loss; Micromechanical devices; Mirrors; Optical attenuators; Optical design; Optical fiber networks; Optical sensors; Power lasers; Regulators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Sensors, 2005 IEEE

Conference_Location

Irvine, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9056-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSENS.2005.1597747

Filename

1597747