Patents by Inventor Mark Ernest Weber

Mark Ernest Weber has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 7502395
    Abstract: A pulsed coherent fiber array laser system that includes a beam generating sub-system that provides a signal pulse beam having pulses of the desired duration that is split into several fiber channels. Optical leakage between the pulses in each split beam is measured and locked to a reference beam by a phase sensing circuit and phase adjusters so that the phase of each fiber pulsed beam is aligned with the phase of the reference beam. A pulse clipper or filter is employed to remove the pulses in the fiber beams so that they do not saturate the phase sensing circuit. The beam generating sub-system can employ any suitable combination of devices to generate the signal beam and the reference beam, including continuous wave master oscillators, amplitude modulators, frequency shifters, injection seed oscillators, Q-switched lasers, reference oscillators, frequency lockers, wavelength division multiplexers, time gated switches, etc.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 8, 2006
    Date of Patent: March 10, 2009
    Assignee: Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems Corp.
    Inventors: Eric Chiu-Tat Cheng, Robert Rex Rice, Michael Gordon Wickham, Mark Ernest Weber
  • Patent number: 7218402
    Abstract: A hybrid optical/electronic wavefront sensor includes an electro-acoustical device used to upshift an optical reference signal. An optical test signal and the frequency upshifted optical reference signal are optically heterodyned to create a signal having a frequency equivalent to the beat frequency of the two signals, for example, the RF driving frequency of the Bragg cell. The optically heterodyned signal is then converted by way of a detector to an electronic signal having the same phase as the optical test signal. The output of the detector is a sinusoidal signal having the same phase as the phase of the optical test signal. This signal is filtered by way of an AC filter and mixed with a second clock signal, for example, a clock signal that is offset in frequency from the electro-acoustical drive signal by a frequency, for example, between 100 kHz and 1 MHz. These two signals are mixed by way of a mixer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 15, 2007
    Assignee: Northrop Grumman Corporation
    Inventors: Stephen John Brosnan, Mark Ernest Weber