Patent ID: 8380064
Filing Date: 2013-02-19
Classification: G02B,H04B

Abstract:
1. An optical device for a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission system comprising: a plurality of optical sources, each source providing an optical source signal; a polarisation maintaining (PM) multiplexer coupled to the optical sources for multiplexing the optical source signals to form a polarised multiplexed signal; and, a differential group delay (DGD) element coupled to an output of the PM multiplexer, wherein the DGD element is adapted to depolarise the multiplexed signal while retaining a substantial time-averaged degree of polarisation (DOP) for each source signal, wherein the DGD element is adapted such that the angle between the time-averaged state of polarisation (SOP) of adjacent optical source signals in the depolarised multiplexed signal is 360/n degrees, where n is an integer greater than or equal to three.