DIRECTIONAL OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE COUPLERS

摘要

DIRECTIONAL OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE COUPLERS Directional optical waveguide couplers for use with planar-form optical waveguides or optical fiber waveguides are disclosed. In the coupler arrangements, light energy propagating in a direction of interest in the core of a cladded optical waveguide is first coupled into a selected region of the cladding by a mode coupling means and then coupled out of the selected cladding region by a branching optical waveguide or power tap for subsequent conversion to a representative electrical signal. The selected region of the cladding is isolated from spurious cladding modes by a pair of stripper-absorber means to ensure that the coupled out light energy is derived only from the coreguided modes propagating in the direction of interest.