Optical Transceiver Testing and Inspection Patent Landscape 2026
- Filing has cooled since 2018. the peak year (15 filings) sits near the start of the window, and the 2022 midpoint of 13 shows a flat-to-declining trend rather than continued build-out.
- China and the US split the docket almost evenly. 49 receiving-office filings in China against 47 in the US, with Europe, the UK, WIPO and Canada trailing well behind.
- The most-cited prior art predates the current filing wave. the top-cited records run from the early 2000s through CN105049113A, meaning influence in this corpus concentrates in older channel-feedback and extinction-ratio patents, not recent filings.
Filing growth compares 2021 (11 records) with 2024 (9) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 123 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families claiming test and inspection methods for optical transceivers and optical modules — bit error rate testing, eye diagram analysis, insertion loss testing and wafer-level test — filtered against the IPC classes covering optical transmission (H04B10/07), measurement instruments (G01M11) and fibre-optic coupling elements (G02B6/42). The 123 families span 2015 through the current data cut-off, and the underlying IPC mix shows the work sitting mostly inside H04B transmission claims, with meaningful overlap into G02B optical elements and a smaller footprint in dedicated measurement classes such as G01M and G01R.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one or two years in the trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Read the recent-year figures as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and the IPC subclass breakdown for the 123 families in this corpus, drawn from the receiving offices and classification codes attached to each record.
A peak in 2018, then a plateau
Filings ran at 9 in 2017, rose to a peak of 15 in 2018, and by the 2022 midpoint had settled back to 13 — a pattern consistent with claim space that filled early rather than one still expanding. The tail years are undercounted because of publication lag, but the shape of the middle years already points to flat-to-declining activity rather than a new filing wave.
H04B dominates; G02B and H04L trail
H04B transmission claims appear in 113 of the 123 records, making it the default classification for this topic. H04L digital transmission (24) and G02B optical elements (19) are the next largest groups, while dedicated test-instrument classes — G01M (6) and G01R (4) — are comparatively thin, suggesting most applicants frame test claims as part of a transceiver or transmission system rather than as standalone measurement apparatus.
Shares are the percentage of the 123 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Optical Transceiver Testing and Inspection with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about optical transceiver testing and inspection and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a representative recent filing
Optical transceiver tuning using machine learning (US20220311514A1)
A test and measurement device connects to an optical transceiver, sets initial operating parameters, acquires and measures a waveform to determine pass or fail, and — on failure — sends the waveform and parameters to a machine learning system to obtain estimated corrected parameters, then repeats the cycle.Filed by Tektronix; assignee, filing number and date are rendered above.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN105049113A | 一种有源光模块多通道自动化测试系统及方法 | 77 |
| 2 | US20040071389A1 | Optical and electrical channel feedback in optical transceiver module | 53 |
| 3 | US7477847B2 | Optical and electrical channel feedback in optical transceiver module | 40 |
| 4 | US6546345B1 | System and method for measuring extinction ratio and deterministic jitter | 37 |
| 5 | US6676304B1 | Optical module testing system | 35 |
| 6 | US11070288B1 | Optical transceiver loopback eye scans | 24 |
| 7 | US8041226B2 | Optical transceiver with equalizing function and a method to setup the optical transceiver | 24 |
| 8 | CN103200044A | 背板测试系统及验证100G背板互连信号质量的方法 | 23 |
| 9 | US20020037033A1 | Serialised test of parallel optical module | 22 |
| 10 | US20160277104A1 | Enhanced transmission and reception of remote digital diagnostic information of optical transceivers | 18 |
Citation counts favour older records in any searched corpus — treat this table as a map of influence, not of current filing priority.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say
Three read-outs from the filing trend, the citation table and the classification mix.
Growth flattened after the early peak
The peak year, 2018, is already behind the midpoint of the window. A 2022 count roughly level with — not above — the peak points to a technology area where the core claim space was staked out early and later filers are adding variations rather than opening new ground.
China and the US are near-equal gatekeepers
With China at 49 and the US at 47 receiving-office filings, freedom-to-operate work has to clear both jurisdictions rather than one dominant office. Europe, the UK, WIPO and Canada combined still trail either of the top two individually.
The most-influential prior art is a multi-channel test system
CN105049113A, an automated multi-channel active optical module test system and method, leads the citation table at 77 citations — ahead of a cluster of US channel-feedback and extinction-ratio patents dating back to the early 2000s. New filings in this space are being read against, and designed around, that older art.
Test claims are framed as transmission claims, not instrument claims
Only 6 records sit in the dedicated test-instrument class G01M, versus 113 in the general transmission class H04B. Applicants are overwhelmingly claiming test and inspection steps inside transceiver or system patents rather than filing standalone measurement-apparatus patents.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to optical transceiver testing and inspection, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the docket has gone quiet
Recent-year momentum across the named assignees shows a common pattern: activity that was present earlier in the window but has not carried into the latest tracked year.
The named assignees show no filings in the most recent year
OE Solutions USA, Finisar, Hisense Broadband, InnoLight, ETRI and Fiberhome all show zero filings in the latest tracked year, with Hisense Broadband recording a -100% year-on-year change. Given publication lag, some of this is reporting delay rather than a real stop, but the breadth of the pattern across six otherwise-active filers is notable.
Filing sits with a recognisable set of transceiver and component makers
The assignee ranking is built from the same 123 families as the rest of this landscape, drawn from transceiver, optical-component and test-instrument makers plus at least one research institute. That mix — component vendors alongside a national lab — suggests the test methods here are being built into product qualification flows as much as into pure R&D output.
A two-jurisdiction filing strategy, with Europe a distant third
The gap between the top two receiving offices (China, US) and the third (EPO, at 9) is large enough that a filing strategy built only around China and the US would already capture the large majority of this docket's coverage.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| OE Solutions America, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Finisar Corporation | 0 | — |
| Qingdao Hisense Broadband Multimedia Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| InnoLight Technology Corporation | 0 | — |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) | 0 | — |
| Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Tektronix, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Wuhan Accelink Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The filing trend and the classification mix point to a field where claim space filled early; the open questions are about where the remaining gaps sit and how to file around dense prior art.
Map the white space against G01M and G01R
With only 6 and 4 records respectively, dedicated measurement-instrument claims are thin relative to the 113 H04B records. That gap is worth probing before assuming it is closed.
Explore white space in Eureka →Track the highest-cited prior art directly
CN105049113A and the cluster of US channel-feedback patents anchor this corpus's citation graph. Any new filing should be checked against them first.
Pull citation chains in Eureka →Watch for renewed filing once lag clears
The zero-filing pattern across six named assignees in the latest year is partly a publication-lag artefact. Revisit this trend once another 12–18 months of data has published.
Set a filing alert in Eureka →Common questions
The core classes in this landscape are H04B10/07 for optical transmission systems with monitoring or testing functions, G01M11 for optical instrument and equipment testing, and G02B6/42 for fibre-optic coupling elements. In practice, H04B is by far the dominant classification — 113 of the 123 records in this corpus carry an H04B code — because most applicants frame test and inspection steps as part of a transceiver or transmission-system claim rather than as a standalone measurement apparatus. G01M and G01R, the classes dedicated purely to test instruments, are comparatively thin at 6 and 4 records respectively.
Based on this corpus, no — filing peaked at 15 in 2018 and had settled to 13 by the 2022 midpoint, which is flat-to-declining rather than growth. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the last one or two years in any trend chart will look artificially low, so the very end of the series should not be read as a real drop-off yet. But the middle years already show a plateau, not an acceleration.
The most-cited record in this corpus is CN105049113A, an automated multi-channel active optical module test system and method, with 77 citations. It is followed by a cluster of older US patents on optical and electrical channel feedback in transceiver modules and on extinction-ratio and jitter measurement, some dating back to the early 2000s. High citation counts in a searched corpus tend to favour older records simply because they have had more time to be cited, so treat this table as a map of foundational influence rather than of current filing priority.
The receiving-office data shows China and the US are near-equal gatekeepers for this technology, with 49 and 47 filings respectively — far ahead of Europe (9), the UK (7), WIPO (7) and Canada (1). A filing or freedom-to-operate strategy that only clears one of the two major offices will miss a large share of the competitive art. Europe and the other jurisdictions are worth a check for specific licensing or litigation exposure, but they are not where the bulk of this docket sits.
The classification data points to dedicated measurement-instrument claims — G01M and G01R — as thinner than the dominant H04B transmission-system framing, and AI-assisted test methods (G06N, only 3 records) are barely represented at all. Sub-areas such as wafer-level probing for co-packaged optics, ML-assisted eye-diagram scoring, in-line insertion loss testing during assembly, and extinction-ratio measurement at higher baud rates all show low filing density relative to the core transceiver-test claims. Low density signals unoccupied claim space, not necessarily unsolved engineering — verify feasibility separately before filing.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.