Present photonic systems involve communication and information processing applications in which optical signals are generated, modulated, transmitted, and detected and then transformed to electrical form for final use. All optical signal processing systems for both optical communications and optical computing have tremendous potential for dramatically improving the information handling capacity and data rate in various signal processing systems by keeping the information in optical form during more of the processing path. Major improvements in real-time signal analysis systems can be obtained through the implementation of all optical circuits due to the advantage of low power consumption, high speed, and noise immunity. Additionally, all optical systems lend themselves directly to implementation in highly parallel, high throughput architectures.

Date Published: 10 March 1988
PDF: 16 pages
Proc. SPIE 0835, Integrated Optical Circuit Engineering V, (10 March 1988); doi: 10.1117/12.942376

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0835:
Integrated Optical Circuit Engineering V
Mark A. Mentzer, Editor(s)