Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080199185 | METHOD AN APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING REAL-TIME MEASUREMENTS OF OPTICAL SIGNALS IN AN OPTICAL NETWORK WITH MINIMAL OR NO INTERRUPTIONS IN COMMUNICATIONS OVER THE NETWORK - High-speed measurements of the output power level of a laser are obtained by using a high-speed optical monitoring device that is capable of producing an electrical feedback signal having an amplitude that varies based on the amount of light impinging on the monitoring devices. These signals are processed and measured by OTDR circuitry and sampling circuitry within the transceiver module to allow measurements to be made in the transceiver module to detect breaks, defects or discontinuities in the transmit fiber, BER, mask margin, jitter, rise and fall times, logic 1 level, logic 0 level, crossing level of rise and fall times, double tracing anomalies, hits in the eye region, etc. | 08-21-2008 |
20080226288 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING RECEIVER SENSITIVITY TESTING AND STRESSED RECEIVE SENSITIVITY TESTING IN A TRANSCEIVER - An apparatus and method are provided for use in a transceiver that enable the transceiver to test itself to determine whether the receiver portion of the transceiver meets receiver sensitivity requirements and stressed receive sensitivity requirements. | 09-18-2008 |
20080279566 | METHODS AND APPARATUSES FOR MEASURING JITTER IN A TRANSCEIVER MODULE - Methods and apparatuses are provided for performing jitter measurements in a transceiver module. Accordingly, there is no need to use expensive test equipment that must be inserted into and removed from the network in order to obtain these measurements. In addition, because the measurements can be obtained at any time without any interruption in communications over the network, jitter performance can be monitored more closely and more frequently to facilitate better and earlier diagnosis of problems that can lead to failures in the network. | 11-13-2008 |
20100080567 | PARALLEL OPTICAL TRANSCEIVER MODULE HAVING A BALANCED LASER DRIVER ARRANGEMENT - A parallel optical transceiver module is provided that has a balanced laser driver arrangement. The balanced laser driver arrangement of the invention includes at least two laser diode driver ICs, which preferably are located on opposite sides of a laser diode IC. Each laser diode driver IC drives a subset (e.g., half) of the total number of laser diodes of the laser diode IC. Because each laser diode driver IC drives a subset of the total number of laser diodes of the laser diode IC, the pitch (i.e., distance) between the high-speed signal pathways within the laser diode driver ICs can be increased. Increasing the pitch between the high-speed signal pathways provides several advantages, including, for example, reducing the potential for electrical cross-talk and inductive coupling between adjacent wire bonds that connect the output driver pads on the driver IC to the respective input pads on the laser diode IC. | 04-01-2010 |
20100098147 | EQUALIZER AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING EQUALIZATION - An FFE/DFE equalizer is provided that uses unclocked FIR filters. At least one of the unclocked FIR filters has tunable delay cells that can be tuned to adjust their respective time delay time periods. Because the FIR filters of the FFE/DFE equalizer are unclocked, the complexity and die area associated with clocking circuits are avoided, thereby enabling costs to be reduced. Because the delay cells of at least one of the FIR filters are tunable to enable their respective time delay periods to be adjusted, very good equalizer performance is achieved without having to use clocked circuits. In addition, because clocked circuits are not used in the FIR filters, the need for clocking circuits to control the timing of clocked circuits is obviated, which leads to a reduction in the amount of power consumed by the FFE/DFE equalizer. | 04-22-2010 |
20100254711 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING DIRECT CURRENT (DC) OFFSET CANCELLATION IN AN OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE - An apparatus and method are provided that enable a direct current (DC) offset cancellation (OC) feedback control loop of an optical TX or optical RX to be opened and closed and the bandwidth (BW) of the loop to be adjusted based on a status of an input signal to the RX or TX. Opening and closing the loop and adjusting the BW of the loop allows lower data rates to be achieved and allows relatively long patterns of consecutive 1s or 0s to be transmitted or received without being cancelled out due to the low cutoff frequency of the loop. In addition, opening and closing the loop and adjusting its BW allows the foregoing advantages to be realized without causing an increase in the startup settling time period or in the signal detection time period of the optical TX or RX. | 10-07-2010 |
20100254717 | APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING THE OPTICAL OUTPUT POWER OF A LASER IN AN OPTICAL TRANSMITTER (TX) - A semi-open feedback loop optical output power control apparatus and method are provided for use in an optical TX. The apparatus and method enable input data signals having content frequencies that are below the cutoff frequency of the optical output power monitoring and control feedback loop to be utilized. This is accomplished at least in part by opening and closing (i.e., is disabling and enabling) the feedback loop based on whether or not one or more transitions in the input data signal to the optical TX from a logic 0 to a logic 1, or vice versa, are detected within a predetermined timing interval. In addition, the apparatus and method provide these and other advantages without causing the optical TX to have an increased link startup settling time period. The feedback loop has a low pass filter (LPF) that has a selectable bandwidth. The bandwidth of the LPF is set to a high bandwidth at startup to enable shorter link startup settling time periods to be achieved by the TX and is set to a low bandwidth at a later time to enable the feedback loop to cause more accurate adjustments to the optical output power of the laser to achieve a better bit error rate (BER). | 10-07-2010 |
20100303472 | APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ADAPTIVELY CONTROLLING THE IMPULSE RESPONSE OF THE OPTICAL SIGNAL OUTPUT FROM A LASER OF AN OPTICAL TRANSMITTER (TX) - An apparatus and a method are provided for adaptively adjusting the impulse response of the optical output of the laser of the optical TX in a way that ensures that the optical waveform being transmitted from the optical TX into the optical waveguide of the optical link has a desired waveform shape that improves or optimizes the performance of the optical link across variations in temperature, power supply, laser process corners, IC process corners, component aging, mechanical manufacturing tolerances, and part alignment tolerances. Adaptively adjusting the impulse response of the optical signal output from the laser in this way allows the optical TX to dynamically adapt to and compensate for a wide range of factors that typically cause performance degradation and result in reduced product yields, increased testing times, and increased test complexity, and higher costs. This, in turn, allows manufacturing tolerances and alignment tolerances to be relaxed, test times and test complexity to be reduced, and overall manufacturing and testing costs to be reduced. | 12-02-2010 |
20120177367 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ADJUSTING THE GAIN OF AN AMPLIFIER OF AN OPTICAL RECEIVER MODULE BASED ON LINK BIT ERROR RATE (BER) MEASUREMENTS - An open loop gain adjustment method and apparatus are provided for adjusting the gain of a TIA of an optical RX module based on measurements of the BER of the optical link in which the optical RX module is employed. The gain of the TIA is adjusted until a determination is made that a satisfactory or optimum link BER has been achieved. | 07-12-2012 |
20120191997 | ACTIVE OPTICAL CABLE (AOC) AND A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING POWER MANAGEMENT IN THE AOC - An active optical cable is provided that incorporates a power management solution. The AOC has plugs that are configured to mate with respective USB sockets. The AOC is used to interconnect a USB host with a USB device. To the USB host and to the USB device, the AOC appears to be a standard USB electrical cable. Each of the plugs of the AOC has an optical-to-electrical and an electrical-to-optical (OE/EO) conversion module that converts electrical USB signals output from the USB host or USB device into optical signals and converts optical signals carried on the optical fibers of the AOC into electrical USB signals. The plugs include controllers that monitor certain conditions of the AOC and that select the power levels to be used in the plugs based on detected conditions. | 07-26-2012 |
20130318385 | METHOD FOR PERFORMING POWER MANAGEMENT IN AN ACTIVE OPTICAL CABLE (AOC) - An active optical cable is provided that incorporates a power management solution. The AOC has plugs are configured to mate with respective USB sockets. The AOC is used to interconnect a USB host with a USB device. To the USB host and to the USB device, the AOC appears to be a standard USB electrical cable. Each of the plugs of the AOC has an optical-to-electrical and an electrical-to-optical (OE/EO) conversion module that converts electrical USB signals output from the USB host or USB device into optical signals and converts optical signals carried on the optical fibers of the AOC into electrical USB signals. The plugs include controllers that monitor certain conditions of the AOC and that select the power levels to be used in the plugs based on detected conditions. | 11-28-2013 |