A telecommunications module includes a main housing portion and a cover, the main housing portion defining a first sidewall, a front wall, a rear wall, a top wall, and a bottom wall, the cover defining a second sidewall when mounted on the main housing portion. An optical component located within the module receives an input signal from a signal input location of the housing and outputs an output signal toward a signal output location on the front wall. The telecommunications module is configured such that the signal input location can be selected to be either on the front wall or the rear wall of the main housing. The cover defines a protrusion extending from the second sidewall toward the main housing portion, the protrusion being selectively breakable to expose a recess on the front wall of the main housing portion that defines a signal input location.

Predictive management of a network buffer is contemplated. The network buffer maybe predictively managed to control packet drop based at least in part on predicted sojourn time. The predicted sojourn time may be determined to predict time needed from an arriving packet to travel through a queue of the network buffer.

Telecommunications switches are presented, including expandable optical switches that allow for a switch of N inputs?M outputs to be expanded arbitrarily to a new number of N inputs and/or a new number of M outputs. Switches having internal switch blocks controlling signal bypass lines are also provided, with these switches being useful for the expandable switches.

Narrow linewidth multi-wavelength (MW) light sources and related methods are disclosed. Such a light source includes gain chips coupled to a wavelength combiner and reflection chip that includes phase control sections (PCSs), a wavelength division multiplexer (WDM), and a micro-ring resonator (MRR) based reflector. The WDM combines light beams received from the gain chips, via the PCSs, into a combined light beam. The MRR based reflector receives the combined light beam and generates both a reflection MW light beam and a transmission MW light beam. The WDM receives the reflection MW light beam, separates it into different wavelengths, and provides each different wavelength of light via a respective one of the PCSs to a respective one of the gain chips to self seed an internal laser cavity thereof. The transmission MW light beam is, or is used to produce, the narrow linewidth MW light produced by the light source.

The teachings of the present disclosure enable contra-DC wavelength filters having improved filtering performance as compared to the prior art by including transition taper regions between a bus waveguide and a central mirror region, where the taper regions provide significantly longer interaction regions between the bus-waveguide and a grating element that defines the mirror region. In addition, the taper regions adiabatically transition a light signal between weakly coupled regimes to a strongly coupled region in the mirror region. Furthermore, contra-DC filters disclosed herein are made from silicon nitride, which enables their practical fabrication using conventional process nodes in standard silicon foundries. Such contra-DC filters provide a slow increase in coupling strength as a light signal enters the filter, which results in higher sidelobe suppression and lower insertion loss as compared to prior-art WDM filters.

A device for dielectric material characterization of a test sample is provided. The device includes a resonator block having a groove at at least one side of the resonator block, wherein the groove comprises at least a first inclined surface and a second inclined surface and is configured to contact the test sample via the first inclined surface and/or the second inclined surface. In this regard, the resonator block is configured to generate a rotational electric field coupled between the first inclined surface and the second inclined surface of the groove and further to propagate the rotational electric field partially or fully through the test sample in order to perform dielectric material characterization of the test sample.

The optical device coupleable to a waveguide to receive an optical signal from the waveguide generally has at least two optical grating devices optically coupled to one another and having corresponding spectral responses, the spectral response of at least one of said optical grating devices being tunable to adjust an amount of overlapping between the spectral responses of the at least two optical grating devices.

A telecommunications module includes a main housing portion and a cover, the main housing portion defining a first sidewall, a front wall, a rear wall, a top wall, and a bottom wall, the cover defining a second sidewall when mounted on the main housing portion. An optical component located within the module receives an input signal from a signal input location of the housing and outputs an output signal toward a signal output location on the front wall. The telecommunications module is configured such that the signal input location can be selected to be either on the front wall or the rear wall of the main housing. The cover defines a protrusion extending from the second sidewall toward the main housing portion, the protrusion being selectively breakable to expose a recess on the front wall of the main housing portion that defines a signal input location.

An optically switched network system includes an optical switch with N inputs and N outputs that connects N end-nodes and is structured to transmit N wavelengths from each of the N inputs to each of the N outputs. The system includes a virtual data plane and a virtual control plane, which both communicate through the optical switch. The virtual data plane provides any-to-all parallel connectivity for data transmissions among the N end-nodes. The N end-nodes are partitioned into two or more subsets, wherein end-nodes in a given source subset transmit data to a given destination subset using wavelengths, which are not used by end-nodes outside of the given source subset to transmit data to the same given destination subset. The virtual control plane includes two or more rings associated with the two or more subsets of end-nodes. Each ring passes through a subset of end-nodes, and is used to communicate arbitration information among arbitration logic located at each end-node in the ring.

A communication system that can be used, e.g., to provide high-speed access to the servers of a data center. In an example embodiment, the communication system transports data using WDM optical signals. The downlink WDM signals have some WDM components that are modulated with data and some WDM components that are not modulated with data. The uplink WDM signals are generated at the server end of the system by modulating with data the unmodulated WDM components received through the downlink. Appropriately connected wavelength multiplexers, wavelength demultiplexers, and/or optical filters can be used to properly apply the various modulated WDM components to the corresponding optical receivers and the unmodulated WDM components to the corresponding optical transmitters. The resulting system architecture advantageously enables, e.g., the use of a single, conveniently located multi-wavelength light source to provide carrier wavelengths for both uplink and downlink optical traffic.