Patent ID: 6993258

Claim:
An optical transmitter for a WDM system having multiple WDM channels comprising: a pump laser array of up to M pump lasers for producing respective pump beams; a M×N multiplexer having M inputs and N outputs, the M inputs being connected to receive the pump beams from respective ones of the pump lasers, wherein the multiplexer is subdivided into a plurality of modules, wherein each module is decoupled from the other module or modules, and wherein each module is configured so that a pump beam received at any one of the inputs of the multiplexer associated with that module is internally routed to all of the outputs of that module; and a fiber laser array of up to N fiber lasers operable to emit at respective wavelengths λ 1 , λ 2 , . . . λ N for respective ones of the multiple WDM channels, the N outputs of the multiplexer being connected to pump respective ones of the up to N fiber lasers.