Diamond-Shaped Semiconductor Ring Lasers for Analog to Digital Photonic Converters
Abstract
Photonic/ optoelectronic analog to digital converters (ADCs) have advantages in areas such as precise sampling times, narrow sampling apertures, and the ability to sample without contaminating the incident signal. They also have potential to offer the highest sampling rates and bandwidths. Significant challenges remain in the development of photonic ADC architectures and associated components (e.g. compactness, reduce power consumption v. efficiency, improved mechanical and thermal stability, etc.). Monolithically integrated photonic solutions may be the best avenue to address these issues. The bi-directional ring laser is a promising approach to achieving the basic combinational digital photonic logic functions. This study investigated the switching capabilities of diamond shaped ring lasers. Future expectation is that these devices can be used as accurate comparators for optical signals at speeds of 10GHz and above. Switching has been shown with injected powers of less than 2 micro watts and speeds of 10GB/s. Extinction ratios are in the region of 10dB. The comparators can be used as either optical amplitude comparators or wavelength comparators, due to the 0.5L wavelength working range of the devices. It is believed that with further technical investigation and development, these devices will be an aid in fast optical ADC and switching applications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA421293
Entities
People
- Malcolm Green
Organizations
- Rome Laboratory