2-Bit All-Optical Analog-to-Digital Conversion by Slicing Supercontinuum Spectrum and Switching with Nonlinear Optical Loop Mirror and Its Application to Quaternary ASK-to-OOK Modulation Format Converter

Sho-ichiro ODA
Akihiro MARUTA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E88-B    No.5    pp.1963-1969
Publication Date: 2005/05/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e88-b.5.1963
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Joint Special Section on Recent Progress in Optoelectronics and Communications)
Category: Transmission Systems and Technologies
Keyword: 
all-optical analog-to-digital conversion,  optical quantization,  optical coding,  supercontinuum generation,  nonlinear optical loop mirror,  

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Summary: 
Recently, the research on all-optical analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) has been extensively attempted to break through inherently limited operating speed of electronic devices. In this paper, we describe a novel quantization scheme by slicing supercontinuum (SC) spectrum for all-optical ADC and then propose a 2-bit all-optical ADC scheme consisting of the quantization by slicing SC spectrum and the coding by switching pulses with a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM). The feasibility of the proposed quantization scheme was confirmed by numerical simulation. We conducted proof-of-principle experiments of optical quantization by slicing SC spectrum with an arrayed waveguide grating and optical coding by switching pulses with NOLM. We successfully demonstrated optical quantization and coding, which allows us to confirm the feasibility of the proposed 2-bit ADC scheme.