| 摘要 |
A method and apparatus for the parallel optical processing of a plurality of optical beams within a single optical processing unit is provided. The optical processing unit may perform any of the functions associated with the following 3 port devices: a circulator, a demultiplexer, an interleaver, a multiplexer, a forward power tap, a reverse power tap, a power splitter, a polarization beam combiner and a polarization beam splitter. Access to the optical processing unit is provided by opposing bundles of optical fibers the input and output of which is directed from and to the optical function unit by lenses. Each triplet of optical fibers provides 3 ports of access to the optical processing unit. This allows multiple discrete optical beams each with unique optical parameters, e.g. wavelength, power, modulation, polarization, propagation direction, etc. to be individually delivered, to the optical processing unit on respective optical fibers, to be processed in parallel within the optical processing unit, and to be output individually on the appropriate ones of the optical fibers associated with each of the triplets.The performance of a given optical processing unit with respect to any optical beam delivered to it may be improved by coupling the appropriate ports of two or more of the triplets to effectively reintroduce to the optical processing unit via the appropriate port(s) of a second of the triplets at least a portion of a beam initially introduced to the optical processing unit through a selected port(s) of a first of the triplets.
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