Automatic light-coupling system for optical components

Details Automatic light-coupling system for optical components Automatic light-coupling system for optical components

2000-02-11

2002-01-22

Schuberg, Darren (Department: 2872)

Optical waveguides

With optical coupler

With alignment device

C385S134000, C356S153000, C356S399000, C356S400000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06341187

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the invention
This invention relates to an optical system, and more particularly to an automatic light-coupling system for optical components.
2. Description of prior art
In the prior arts, an active optical component is normally used to direct an optical signal into a fiber or extract a signal through the light output from a fiber. The light-coupling process is important but difficult to apply in opto-electronic systems since the diameter of the core of a fiber is only several ten micrometers to several micrometers. Light-coupling technology includes flip chip bonding technology and automatic light-coupling technology.
In the automatic light-coupling technology, a light-emitting component emits a light beam that is coupled into a light-guiding component. A light-receiving component monitors the coupling condition and corrects the light-coupling efficiency. The light coupling can be manually adjusted or automatically adjusted. However, most of the light-coupling adjustment is automatic due to economic considerations. As disclosed in “Handbook of Fiber Optic Data Communication,” Section 5.3, Chapter 18, Academic Press, 1988, automatic light-coupling technology normally adjusts the coupling efficiency by moving the five axes X, Y, Z, &thgr;
x
and &thgr;
y
in space to optimize the coupling effect. However, it is very difficult to find the optimized coupling position since the five axes are moved independently but affect each other.
The optimized light-coupling way presently utilized is to adjust the X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis independently, and find the best light-coupling point on the XY-plane for each fixed Z-axis. Referring to
FIG. 1
, a box scan is first performed on XY-plane, then a line scan is performed if a light spot is found to find the position having a maximum intensity. However, the optimized light-coupling position is very difficult to find if the optical axis is inclined.
The common method to couple an optical component with a fiber adapter uses a 3-dimensional movable table to adjust the coupling position and the focus condition, but this doesn't solve the problem of inclination.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, to overcome the prior-art problems, the object of this invention is to provide an automatic light-coupling system for optical components to improve the light-coupling efficiency of a fiber adapter and a To-Can type of light source.
The automatic light-coupling system of this invention can lower the effect of an inclined optical axis, increase the coupling efficiency, and reduce the coupling time and the mass-production cost.
To achieve the above object, this invention locates the optical axis at the initial position of the coupling media by rotating a horizontal turntable and a turntable of optical components. Further, the optical axis is parallel to the line that a focus-control movable table moves along. Therefore, an optimized coupling position can be obtained by moving the focus-control movable table horizontally.


REFERENCES:
patent: 3800388 (1974-04-01), Borner
patent: 4506947 (1985-03-01), Tatekura
patent: 4798442 (1989-01-01), Feilhauer
patent: 5383118 (1995-01-01), Nguyen
DeCusatis et al., “Handbook of Fiber Optic Data Communication”, 1988, Academic Press, pp. 652-655.

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