Polymer fiber image guide optical circuits that incorporate free-space add-drop components.
We further extend the capability of a polymer-fiber-image-guide-(PFIG-) based optical circuit from a pure point-to-point interconnect scheme to a general-purpose optical network with data-branching capabilities. Two-dimensional array data can be inserted and taken away at free-space add-drop nodes, which are implemented with free-space minioptical components. A four-node hybrid circuit with PFIG's to transmit bit-parallel data and free-space components to perform add-drop is experimentally demonstrated.
Ai
J
J
NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
Li
Y
Y