US Patent 7272323 Bi-directional electrical to optical converter module

A bi-directional (BiDi) electrical to optical converter (transceiver) module is described that contains means for communicating in a full duplex fashion over one fiber. Furthermore, an automatic fail-over capability is included which allows redundancy to be build in to the transceiver. In one configuration, a BiDi transceiver module contains two lasers at different wavelengths and a means for establishing which wavelength to communicate with. An example of an application for the described invention is a storage area network application which requires redundant links and are currently bound by the number of fibers connecting to the front panels of switches.