Design and implementation of a broadband optical rotary joint using C-lenses.

A broadband optical rotary joint (BORJ) was designed using C-lenses. Its insertion loss was less than 2 dB at both the 1300 nm and 1550 nm wavelength windows. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique was adopted to increase the number of data transmission channels. Hundreds of wavelength channels can be accommodated for data transmission through relatively rotating interfaces using this BORJ. The total data transmission rate through this BORJ can be more than 200 Gbit/s. By using Dove prism, both space division multiplexing (SDM) and WDM techniques can be implemented simultaneously in the design of BORJ with C-lenses. This structure of BORJ has a low cost. It can be used for optical data transmission and optical sensing.