Nanoscale optical Viterbi decoder realized on a silicon chip

An all optical Viterbi decoder, realized on a silicon chip was designed. The device relies on mode coupling inside a ring resonator, and is composed of an optical memory cell and two interfering input arms that use QPSK modulation to encode the incoming bits. The device has a dimension of a few micrometers, and is capable of processing bits with a length of just a few picoseconds. The approach chosen in this research demonstrates the capability to design all-optical processing units which are not composed of single building blocks. (C) 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.JNP.7.073096]