Detailed Description
Hereinafter, example embodiments according to the present application will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be understood that the described embodiments are only some embodiments of the present application and not all embodiments of the present application, and that the present application is not limited by the example embodiments described herein.
The problems of high hardware cost and high management cost in the prior art are solved when a plurality of lasers are generally required to be arranged at a data sending end in data transmission by using a wavelength division multiplexing technology. According to the technical scheme, the tunable laser is arranged at the data sending end, different wavelengths are distributed to each user, so that a data queue to be sent and an attribution user identification of the data queue to be sent can be obtained when data are sent, the corresponding transmission wavelength can be determined based on the attribution user identification, and therefore the tunable laser can be modulated, and the tunable laser can transmit the data queue to be sent by utilizing the light wave signals with the transmission wavelength.
According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, for the data sending end, the data queues of each user are sent in a time-sharing mode at the data sending end, and different transmission wavelengths are distributed to the data queues of different users, so that the complexity of the time division multiplexing technology is reduced compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology; in addition, different from the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology, the wavelength division multiplexing is carried out by utilizing one tunable laser at the data sending end, so that the hardware cost and the management cost can be reduced compared with the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology. According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, the data sending end has advantages compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology and the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology; meanwhile, the data transmitting end can be obtained by improving the data transmitting end supporting the traditional time division multiplexing technology, so that the data transmitting end becomes the data transmitting end supporting the wavelength division multiplexing technology, the upgrading cost of the optical fiber communication network data transmitting end can be effectively reduced, and the benefits of operators are increased.
According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, for the data receiving end, the data receiving end of the existing wavelength division multiplexing technology can be used for receiving and demultiplexing the optical wave signals without improving the optical wave signals, and the technical effect of being compatible with the existing wavelength division multiplexing system is achieved.
Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of an optical fiber communication system according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, and as shown in fig. 1, the optical fiber communication system includes a data sending end and a data receiving end, where the data sending end is provided with a tunable laser 10 and a data sending apparatus 20, and the data receiving end is provided with a demultiplexer 30 and a plurality of receivers 40. The data sending device 20 can send data queues of different users in a time-sharing manner, and simultaneously controls the tunable laser 10 to transmit the data queues by using the optical wave signals with the transmission wavelength lambda corresponding to the attributive user identification of the data queues; at the data receiving end, the demultiplexer 30 can demultiplex the lightwave signals with different wavelengths to the corresponding receivers 40, thereby achieving the purpose of sending the unused user data queues to the corresponding receivers 40.
The demultiplexer 30 and the plurality of receivers 40 at the data receiving end can continue to use the devices of the existing optical fiber communication system, and no additional devices are needed, so that the system transformation cost of the technical scheme of the application in use is further reduced; meanwhile, for the data sending end of the present application, on one hand, the laser type of an Optical Transform Unit (OTU) is improved, that is, a tunable laser is adopted, and on the other hand, on the basis of maintaining a traditional data sending module, the traditional data sending module can send data queues of multiple users to the tunable laser, a control module is further additionally arranged, and the control module is used for implementing the data sending method to be protected in the embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a data transmission method according to an exemplary embodiment of the present application. The embodiment can be applied to a data transmitting end provided with a tunable laser, and can be implemented by a data transmitting apparatus, as shown in fig. 2, including the following steps:
step 201, a data queue to be sent and a home subscriber identifier of the data queue to be sent are obtained.
In this step, the data queues of multiple users may be sent at the data sending end, and as described above, corresponding transmission wavelengths are allocated to different users according to different user identifiers, so that when the data queue to be sent is obtained, the home user identifier of the data queue to be sent also needs to be obtained.
Step 202, determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity, and the transmission wavelengths corresponding to different home subscriber identities are different.
In some embodiments, a corresponding transmission wavelength may be allocated to each user in advance, and a corresponding relationship between the user identifier and the transmission wavelength is established, that is, each user identifier corresponds to a unique transmission wavelength, and the corresponding relationship may be recorded in the storage module. In this step, after the home subscriber identifier of the data queue to be sent is obtained in step 201, the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier may be obtained according to the home subscriber identifier and the pre-stored correspondence between the home subscriber identifier and the transmission wavelength.
Step 203, modulating the tunable laser based on the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier, so that the tunable laser transmits the data queue to be transmitted by using the optical wave signal of the transmission wavelength.
As described above, the tunable laser used in this embodiment of the present application may be modulated to make the optical wave signal emitted by the tunable laser have different transmission wavelengths, so as to transmit data queues of different users, and in this step, a modulation instruction may be sent to the tunable laser to instruct the tunable laser to emit an optical wave signal having a transmission wavelength corresponding to the identifier of the home subscriber. Meanwhile, for the data queue of the home subscriber, the modulated laser generates a corresponding light wave signal, transmits the light wave signal to the optical fiber, and sends the light wave signal to a corresponding data receiving end through the optical fiber.
In the data sending method provided by the foregoing embodiment of the present application, a tunable laser is set at a data sending end, and the tunable laser can output a plurality of lightwave signals with different transmission wavelengths, so that when sending data, a data queue to be sent and an identifier of an affiliated user of the data queue to be sent can be obtained by allocating different transmission wavelengths to different users, and a transmission wavelength corresponding to the identifier of the affiliated user can be determined based on the identifier of the affiliated user, so that the tunable laser can be modulated, and the tunable laser can transmit the data queue to be sent by using the lightwave signals with the transmission wavelengths.
According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, for the data sending end, the data queues of each user are sent in a time-sharing mode at the data sending end, and the data queues of different users are distributed with different transmission wavelengths, so that the complexity of the time division multiplexing technology is reduced compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology; in addition, different from the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology, the wavelength division multiplexing is carried out by utilizing one tunable laser at the data sending end, so that the hardware cost and the management cost can be reduced compared with the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology. According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, the data sending end has advantages compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology and the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology; meanwhile, the data transmitting end can be obtained by improving the traditional data transmitting end supporting the time division multiplexing technology, so that the data transmitting end becomes the data transmitting end supporting the wavelength division multiplexing technology, the upgrading cost of the optical fiber communication network data transmitting end can be effectively reduced, and the benefits of operators are increased. In addition, for the data receiving end, the data receiving end of the existing wavelength division multiplexing technology can be used for receiving and demultiplexing the optical wave signals without improving the optical wave signals, and the technical effect of being compatible with the existing wavelength division multiplexing system is achieved.
In the above embodiment, before the step of determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity of the data queue to be sent in step 202, a judgment may be made according to different conditions to determine whether to execute the step:
under the first condition, whether the attribution user identification of the data queue to be sent is consistent with the attribution user identification of the data queue sent last time or not can be judged, and the transmission wavelength corresponding to the attribution user identification of the data queue to be sent is determined when the attribution user identification of the data queue to be sent is determined to be inconsistent with the attribution user identification of the data queue sent last time, so that the tunable laser can be modulated according to the transmission wavelength subsequently, and the wavelength of the optical wave signal output by the tunable laser can be changed; and if the attribution user identification of the data queue to be sent is consistent with the attribution user identification of the data queue sent last time, the data queue sent by the same user last time is indicated, and at this time, the wavelength of the optical wave signal output by the tunable laser can be not changed, and the last wavelength is still adopted for sending the data queue. In this step, it can be ensured that the tunable laser is not frequently modulated by determining whether the home subscriber identifier of the last data transmission queue is consistent with the home subscriber identifier of the last data transmission queue.
In the second case, a guard interval timer may be set, where the guard interval timer is used to ensure that the data queues sent twice have a certain time interval, that is, after the data queues sent last time are sent, the data queues currently in a to-be-sent state may be sent again after the guard interval timer is determined to be overtime, so that the data queues are sent with a certain time interval, thereby avoiding the optical wave signals transmitted in the optical fibers from being mixed and interfered, and simultaneously being beneficial for the data receiving end to demultiplex the received optical wave signals to send the optical wave signals to different receivers for processing.
For the case that the guard interval timer exists, if the guard interval timer is not found to be overtime, the method continues to wait until the guard interval timer is determined to be overtime, and then the next operation can not be carried out.
Furthermore, for the sending step of the data queue to be sent, after the last data packet of the data queue to be sent is sent, the guard interval timer may be started, and at this time, when the data queue is sent next time, it is also required to ensure that the currently started guard interval timer is overtime, and the next data queue sending can be performed.
In the third case, before determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier, it may be further determined whether the data queue to be transmitted is empty, and if so, a next data queue and a home subscriber identifier of the next data queue may be obtained; if not, the step of determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity may be performed.
In addition, in the embodiment of the present application, the modulating the tunable laser based on the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity may include two implementation manners:
in a first implementation manner, the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier may be sent to a laser control module, so that the laser control module generates a first wavelength control signal, and the laser control module may be set in the OTU together with the tunable laser. The laser control module may generate a first wavelength control signal to control the tunable laser after receiving the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier, so that the tunable laser outputs a light wave signal having a wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier, and the implementation manner is to provide the laser control module in the OTU, so that the laser control module controls the tunable laser to output a light wave signal having a required wavelength;
a second implementation manner is different from the first implementation manner in that a laser control module is not separately arranged in the OTU, but a second wavelength control signal is directly generated according to the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity, and then the second wavelength control signal is sent to the tunable laser, so that the tunable laser outputs the optical wave with the wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity based on the second wavelength control signal. Under the implementation mode, the control functions can be integrated into the same control module to be realized, so that the technical effect of saving the cost can be achieved.
In the embodiment of the present application, the tunable laser used therein may include any one of three types of a current control tunable laser, a temperature control tunable laser, and a mechanical control tunable laser.
Specifically, for the current control tunable laser, the relative refractive index of the fiber grating can be changed by changing the currents of the fiber grating and the phase control part at different positions in the tunable laser, so as to generate different spectra, and the selection of specific wavelength is performed by the superposition of the different spectra generated by the fiber gratings in different areas, so as to generate the light wave signal with the required specific wavelength. For this type of tunable laser, the first and second wavelength control signals described above may be current control signals.
The mechanical control tunable laser is generally implemented by a Micro-Electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology, and a desired specific wavelength can be selected by controlling a rotation angle of a MEMS lens, so as to output a light wave signal of the desired specific wavelength. Therefore, the first and second wavelength control signals may be angle control signals.
For the temperature control tunable laser, the temperature in the laser cavity is adjusted, so that the laser can emit light wave signals with different wavelengths. Thus, the first and second wavelength control signals described above may be temperature control signals.
In the embodiment of the present application, a corresponding transmission wavelength may be allocated to each user in advance, and a correspondence between at least two home subscriber identities and the transmission wavelength is established, where the correspondence may be recorded in the storage module. In this embodiment of the present application, the determination of the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity in step 202 may specifically be:
and acquiring the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identification from a storage module according to the home subscriber identification, wherein the storage module stores the transmission wavelengths corresponding to at least two home subscriber identifications.
With reference to the technical solutions provided by the foregoing embodiments, the following describes overall steps of a data transmission method provided by an embodiment of the present application, and fig. 3 is a schematic flow chart of a data transmission method provided by another exemplary embodiment of the present application, and as shown in fig. 3, the method includes the following steps:
301, acquiring a data queue to be sent and an attribution user identifier of the data queue to be sent;
specifically, when a data transmitting end may need to transmit a data queue of multiple users, for example, the data queue includes the following data queues:
a data queue A \ a user A, a data queue B \ a user B and a data queue C \ a user C … …;
the data queue to be sent obtained in this step is a data queue B, and the home subscriber identifier of the data queue B is a subscriber B;
step 302, determining whether a data queue to be sent, that is, a data queue B, is empty, if the data queue B is empty, executing step 303, and if the data queue B is not empty, executing step 304;
step 303, traversing the next data queue to obtain a new data queue to be sent and a home subscriber identifier thereof, that is, obtaining a data queue C, wherein the home subscriber identifier of the data queue C is a subscriber C;
step 304, determining whether the data queue B is consistent with the home subscriber identifier of the data queue sent last time, if so, executing step 309, and if not, executing step 305, where the home subscriber identifier of the data queue a sent last time in this embodiment is the subscriber a, and at this time, executing step 305;
step 305, determining whether a guard interval timer is overtime, where the guard interval timer is started after sending an external data queue a, if the guard interval timer is overtime, executing step 307, and if the guard interval timer is not overtime, executing step 306, specifically, setting a certain guard interval for sending different data queues may refer to fig. 4, where in fig. 4, λ 1, λ 2, and λ 3 are respectively used to send data queues of different users, and corresponding guard intervals are set in the sending processes of different data queues;
step 306, stopping sending the data queue B, waiting, and executing step 305;
step 307, based on the attribution user identifier of the data queue B, that is, the user B, searching for the transmission wavelength corresponding to the user B from the storage module, where the correspondence between the user identifier and the transmission wavelength may be preset in advance and stored, where each user identifier corresponds to one transmission wavelength, and the transmission wavelengths are all wavelengths supported by the tunable laser;
and 308, modulating the wavelength of the optical wave signal output by the tunable laser. Specifically, as described above, the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier may be sent to the laser control module through the external configuration interface of the OTU, so that the laser control module generates the first wavelength control signal, and further modulates the tunable laser; or generating a second wavelength control signal according to the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity; the second wavelength control signal is sent directly to the tunable laser.
The tunable laser may be any one of a current-controlled tunable laser, a temperature-controlled tunable laser, and a mechanical-controlled tunable laser. The first wavelength control signal and the second wavelength control signal may be any one of the following types of control signals: a current control signal, an angle control signal, or a temperature control signal;
step 309, sending the data queue to be sent to the OTU, and when the data queue includes a plurality of data packets, sending the data packets to the OTU in sequence, that is, modulating the data packets to an optical wave signal by a tunable laser, so as to transmit the optical wave signal in an optical fiber;
step 310, judging whether the currently sent data packet is the last data packet of the data queue B, if so, executing step 312, otherwise, executing step 311;
step 311, obtaining the next data packet of the currently sent data queue, and going to step 309;
step 312, start guard interval timer, and go to step 303.
Corresponding to the above method embodiment, in the technical solution provided by the present application, a data transmitting apparatus is also provided, where the data transmitting apparatus may be arranged at a data transmitting end, and the data transmitting end is provided with a tunable laser.
Fig. 5 is a schematic structural diagram of a data transmitting apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present application, and as shown in fig. 5, the apparatus includes a first obtaining module 51, a first determining module 52, and a wavelength modulating module 53.
The first obtaining module 51 is configured to obtain a data queue to be sent and an identifier of a home subscriber of the data queue to be sent; the first determining module 52 is configured to determine a transmission wavelength corresponding to a home subscriber identity, where the transmission wavelengths corresponding to different home subscriber identities are different; the wavelength modulation module 53 is configured to modulate the tunable laser based on the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier, so that the tunable laser transmits the to-be-transmitted data queue by using the optical wave signal of the transmission wavelength.
In the data transmitting apparatus provided in the foregoing embodiment of the present application, a tunable laser is set at a data transmitting end, where the tunable laser may output a plurality of lightwave signals with different transmission wavelengths, and different transmission wavelengths are allocated to different users, so that when data is transmitted, a first obtaining module may obtain a data queue to be transmitted and an identifier of an affiliation user of the data queue to be transmitted, and may determine a transmission wavelength corresponding to the data queue to be transmitted based on the identifier of the affiliation user, so as to modulate the tunable laser, and enable the tunable laser to transmit the data queue to be transmitted by using the lightwave signals with the transmission wavelengths.
According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, for the data sending end, the data queues of each user are sent in a time-sharing mode at the data sending end, and the data queues of different users are distributed with different transmission wavelengths, so that the complexity of the time division multiplexing technology is reduced compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology; in addition, unlike the conventional wavelength division multiplexing technology, by performing wavelength division multiplexing at the data transmitting end using one laser, not only the hardware cost but also the management cost can be reduced compared to the conventional wavelength division multiplexing technology. According to the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application, the data sending end has advantages compared with the traditional time division multiplexing technology and the traditional wavelength division multiplexing technology; meanwhile, the data transmitting terminal can be obtained by simply improving the traditional data transmitting terminal supporting the time division multiplexing technology, so that the data transmitting terminal becomes the data transmitting terminal supporting the wavelength division multiplexing technology, the upgrading cost of the optical fiber communication network data transmitting terminal can be effectively reduced, and the benefits of operators are increased. In addition, for the data receiving end, the data receiving end of the existing wavelength division multiplexing technology can be used for receiving and demultiplexing the optical wave signals without improving the optical wave signals, and the technical effect of being compatible with the existing wavelength division multiplexing system is achieved.
Fig. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of a data transmission device according to another exemplary embodiment of the present application, as shown in fig. 6, the data transmission device may further include a second determining module 54, a third determining module 55, a fourth determining module 56, a timer starting module 57, a storage module 58, and the like, and the detailed description of the functions implemented by the modules may also refer to the embodiments shown in fig. 2 and fig. 3.
In some embodiments, the data sending apparatus may further include a second determining module 54, where the second determining module 54 is configured to determine that the home subscriber identity of the data queue to be sent is inconsistent with the home subscriber identity of the data queue sent last time before determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity.
In some embodiments, the data sending apparatus may further include a third determining module 55, where the third determining module 55 is configured to determine that the guard interval timer expires before determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity.
In some embodiments, the data sending apparatus may further include a timer starting module 57, configured to start the guard interval timer after sending the last data packet of the data queue to be sent.
In some embodiments, the data sending apparatus may further include a fourth determining module 56, where the fourth determining module 56 is configured to determine that the queue of data to be sent is not empty before determining the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity.
In addition, as for the wavelength modulation module 53, it may include two cases:
one of the two ways is that the wavelength modulation module 53 includes a wavelength transmitting unit, and is configured to transmit the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier to the laser control module, so that the laser control module generates a first wavelength control signal, and the tunable laser outputs a light wave signal having a transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier based on the first wavelength control signal.
Secondly, as shown in fig. 7, the wavelength modulation module 53 includes a signal generating unit 531 and a signal sending unit 532, where the signal generating unit 531 is configured to generate a second wavelength control signal according to the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity; the signal sending unit 532 is configured to send the second wavelength control signal to the tunable laser, so that the tunable laser outputs an optical wave signal with a transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identity based on the second wavelength control signal.
In addition, as mentioned above, the tunable laser includes any one of a current control tunable laser, a temperature control tunable laser and a mechanical control tunable laser.
In addition, the data sending device further comprises a storage module 58, wherein the storage module 58 is configured to store transmission wavelengths corresponding to at least two home subscriber identities; the first determining module 51 is configured to obtain the transmission wavelength corresponding to the home subscriber identifier from the storage module 58 according to the home subscriber identifier.
For the data transmission apparatus provided in the embodiment of the present application, the functions and processing manners implemented by each module may specifically refer to the method embodiments shown in fig. 2 and fig. 3.
Fig. 8 is a schematic structural diagram of an electronic device according to an exemplary embodiment of the present application, and the electronic device according to the embodiment of the present application is described with reference to fig. 8. The electronic device may be either or both of the first device and the second device, or a stand-alone device separate from them, which stand-alone device may communicate with the first device and the second device to receive the acquired input signals therefrom.
FIG. 8 illustrates a block diagram of an electronic device in accordance with an embodiment of the present application.
As shown in fig. 8, the electronic device 11 includes one or more processors 111 and memory 112.
The processor 111 may be a Central Processing Unit (CPU) or other form of processing unit having data processing capabilities and/or instruction execution capabilities, and may control other components in the electronic device 11 to perform desired functions.
Memory 112 may include one or more computer program products that may include various forms of computer-readable storage media, such as volatile memory and/or non-volatile memory. The volatile memory may include, for example, Random Access Memory (RAM), cache memory (cache), and/or the like. The non-volatile memory may include, for example, Read Only Memory (ROM), hard disk, flash memory, etc. One or more computer program instructions may be stored on the computer-readable storage medium and executed by processor 111 to implement the data transmission methods of the various embodiments of the present application described above, and/or other desired functions. Various contents such as an input signal, a signal component, a noise component, etc. may also be stored in the computer-readable storage medium.
In one example, the electronic device 11 may further include: an input device 113 and an output device 114, which are interconnected by a bus system and/or other form of connection mechanism (not shown).
For example, when the electronic device is a stand-alone device, the input means 113 may be a communication network connector for receiving the acquired input signals from the first device and the second device.
The input device 113 may also include, for example, a keyboard, a mouse, and the like.
The output device 114 may output various information including the determined distance information, direction information, and the like to the outside. The output devices 114 may include, for example, a display, speakers, a printer, and a communication network and remote output devices connected thereto, among others.
Of course, for the sake of simplicity, only some of the components of the electronic device 11 relevant to the present application are shown in fig. 8, and components such as a bus, an input/output interface, and the like are omitted. In addition, the electronic device 11 may include any other suitable components, depending on the particular application.
In addition to the above-described methods and apparatus, embodiments of the present application may also be a computer program product comprising computer program instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps in the data transmission method according to various embodiments of the present application described in the above-mentioned "exemplary methods" section of this specification.
The computer program product may be written with program code for performing the operations of embodiments of the present application in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, C + + or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computing device, partly on the user's device, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computing device and partly on a remote computing device, or entirely on the remote computing device or server.
Furthermore, embodiments of the present application may also be a computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer program instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps in the data transmission method according to various embodiments of the present application described in the "exemplary methods" section above of this specification.
The computer-readable storage medium may take any combination of one or more readable media. The readable medium may be a readable signal medium or a readable storage medium. A readable storage medium may include, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or a combination of any of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the readable storage medium include: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable disk, a hard disk, a Random Access Memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.
The foregoing describes the general principles of the present application in conjunction with specific embodiments, however, it is noted that the advantages, effects, etc. mentioned in the present application are merely examples and are not limiting, and they should not be considered essential to the various embodiments of the present application. Furthermore, the foregoing disclosure of specific details is for the purpose of illustration and description and is not intended to be limiting, since the foregoing disclosure is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosure to the precise details disclosed.
The block diagrams of devices, apparatuses, systems referred to in this application are only given as illustrative examples and are not intended to require or imply that the connections, arrangements, configurations, etc. must be made in the manner shown in the block diagrams. These devices, apparatuses, devices, systems may be connected, arranged, configured in any manner, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art. Words such as "including," "comprising," "having," and the like are open-ended words that mean "including, but not limited to," and are used interchangeably therewith. The words "or" and "as used herein mean, and are used interchangeably with, the word" and/or, "unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. The word "such as" is used herein to mean, and is used interchangeably with, the phrase "such as but not limited to".
It should also be noted that in the devices, apparatuses, and methods of the present application, the components or steps may be decomposed and/or recombined. These decompositions and/or recombinations are to be considered as equivalents of the present application.
The previous description of the disclosed aspects is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to make or use the present application. Various modifications to these aspects will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein may be applied to other aspects without departing from the scope of the application. Thus, the present application is not intended to be limited to the aspects shown herein but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and novel features disclosed herein.
The foregoing description has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. Furthermore, the description is not intended to limit embodiments of the application to the form disclosed herein. While a number of example aspects and embodiments have been discussed above, those of skill in the art will recognize certain variations, modifications, alterations, additions and sub-combinations thereof.