OPTICAL COUPLING SYSTEM, AN OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS MODULE THAT INCORPORATES THE OPTICAL COUPLING SYSTEM, AND A METHOD OF USING THE OPTICAL COUPLING SYSTEM

摘要

An optical coupling system is provided that includes a unitary, or integrally-formed, optical body having lenses formed on its lower end and a diffractive grating formed on its upper end. The unitary optical body is made of a material that is transparent to an operating wavelength of light. Some of the lenses are collimating lenses and some of the lenses are focusing lenses. Diverging light beams emitted by respective laser diodes of a parallel optical transmitter module are incident on the respective collimating lenses, which collimate the respective diverging light beams to produce respective collimated light beams. The respective collimated light beams are then incident on the diffractive grating. The diffractive grating divides each collimated beam into at least a first beam that is transmitted through the grating and a second beam that is reflected by the grating onto the monitor photodiode.