Patent 9116298 was granted and assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories on August, 2015 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A multi-mode interference (MMI) device includes a substrate layer, a core layer grown on the substrate layer for propagating an optical signal, and a cladding layer grown on the core layer for guiding the optical signal. The MMI device also includes a non-uniform pattern of patches forming a non-uniform refractive index distribution within the MMI device.