A fault tolerant optical apparatus resilient to ballistic impact damages, capable of enabling distributed processing and networking and using the spectrophotometric transmission properties of polymer film.

An optical system, an optocoupler, and an isolation device are provided. The disclosed optical system includes at least one photodetector that receives light energy and converts the light energy into one or more electrical signals. The disclosed optical system further includes a comparator module that receives the one or more electrical signals from the at least one photodetector and compares the one or more electrical signals against two different reference values to determine whether a power supply fault condition has occurred for a light source that emitted the light energy and to determine a logic signal conveyed to the at least one photodetector via the light energy emitted by the light source.

An electronic circuit includes an isolation amplifier, having a first input terminal receiving an AC-signal and including a linear opto-isolator. The opto-isolator has a first output terminal that provides a unipolar signal having an AC-component proportional to the input signal. The circuit includes a transimpedance receiver with first and second operational amplifiers. The first amplifier has a second output terminal and first and second differential input terminals, with the first differential input terminal receiving and amplifying the unipolar output signal from the first output terminal providing an output signal from the circuit at the second output terminal. The second amplifier is configured as an integrator, having a third output terminal coupled to the second differential input terminal and having third and fourth differential input terminals, with the third differential input terminal receiving the output signal from the second output terminal and the fourth differential input terminal connected to ground.

An apparatus includes a polarization beam splitter (PBS) and an optical detector. The PBS is configured to receive a polarized optical signal transported via an optical communication path of an optical network. The detector is configured to receive from the PBS a first polarization component of the optical signal, and to produce a first electrical measure of the first polarization component. A processor is configured to determine a dynamic metric of the optical communication path based at least on the first electrical measure. Some embodiments also include a second detector configured to receive from the PBS a second polarization component of the optical signal. The second detector produces a second electrical measure of the second polarization component, and the processor is configured to determine the dynamic metric based on both the first and second electrical measures.

Described herein photonic interconnects based on glass interposers. Glass interposers of the types described herein are used to photonically interconnect multiple smaller photonic integrated circuits (PIC), as opposed to using a single, larger PIC. The typical yield of a glass interposer is significantly higher than the yield of a PIC. This is because glass interposers are passive in nature, while PICs include active photonic elements. Active photonic components (e.g., photonic transceivers and switches) tend to be more susceptible to manufacturing defects than passive photonic components (e.g., waveguides and couplers) because active components require additional manufacturing steps (e.g., ion implantation, sputtering, epitaxial growth, etc.). The approach described herein improves performance because instead of having to slice a large number of continuous reticles from a wafer, one can pick and choose reticles known to have yielded.

Disclosed examples include lateral photovoltaic sensors and systems with one or more semiconductor structures individually including a lateral sensor face to receive photons of a given wavelength, and an extended lateral junction region having an effective junction distance greater than 5 times an absorption depth for the semiconductor structure that corresponds to the given wavelength, to facilitate high current transfer ratios for use in low-noise, high-efficiency power supply applications as well as optically isolated data transfer or photon detector applications.

A system and method are disclosed for providing electrically isolated communications between two USB2 devices. Two isolating eUSB2 repeaters are utilized to implement a digital isolation barrier between the two USB2 devices. The isolating eUSB2 repeaters are configured to broker isolated communications between the two USB2 devices using a modified eUSB2 protocol that allows the two isolating eUSB2 repeaters to interoperate across the isolating barrier. The modified eUSB2 protocol allows the two isolating eUSB2 repeaters to broker isolating communications on behalf of the USB2 devices without the use of an accurate clock signal. The modified eUSB2 protocol utilized by the isolating eUSB2 repeaters is configured in particular to support certain end-of-packet translations between USB2 data and the modified eUSB2 protocol, management of certain USB2 bus state transitions and assignment of roles to the two isolating eUSB2 repeaters.

An input protection circuit (110) for an optocoupler (20) is provided. The input protection circuit (110) includes a first voltage limiter (D1) with a first terminal that is electrically coupled to an input terminal of an amplifier circuit (120), wherein the input terminal of the amplifier circuit (120) is configured to receive a PWM signal and the amplifier circuit (120) is configured to provide a voltage to the optocoupler (20).

A medical device system is configured to sense a physiological signal by a first device and generate a control signal by the first device in response to the physiological signal. An optical transducer is controlled by the first device to emit an optical trigger signal in response to the control signal. A second device receives the optical trigger signal and delivers an automatic therapy to a patient in response to detecting the optical trigger signal.

A light-emitting unit outputs an optical signal corresponding to an input electric signal. A light-receiving unit is electrically insulated from the light-emitting unit and outputs an electric signal according to the received optical signal as an output signal. In the light-receiving unit, a first light-receiving device outputs an optical current according to the optical signal. A second light-receiving device is provided not to receive the optical signal. A current duplication circuit duplicates a current flowing through the second light-receiving device. A current-voltage conversion circuit converts a current, which is generated by subtracting the current duplicated by the current duplication circuit from a current flowing through the first light-receiving device, into a voltage signal. A comparator output a result of a comparison between the voltage signal converted by the current-voltage conversion circuit and a threshold voltage as the output signal.