Takashi NISHITANI, Tsuyoshi KONISHI and Kazuyoshi ITOH

Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1, Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

(Received September 30, 2004; Accepted March 9, 2005)

Integration of a proposed all-optical analog-to-digital (A/D) converter is described. To realize a high-speed and high-throughput system, optical A/D conversion has attracted much attention. A/D conversion generally consists of three processes of sampling, quantization and coding. Whereas an optical sampling technique has already been realized, there have been few investigations on the optical quantization and optical coding technique. We previously proposed an all-optical A/D converter which realizes both optical quantization and optical coding. In this paper, we integrate the proposed all-optical A/D converter to improve its performance and stability. We verify the operation of the integrated all-optical A/D converter composed of a short high nonlinear fiber, arrayed waveguide gratings and variable optical attenuators.

Key words: optical analog-to-digital conversion, ultra-short pulse, self-frequency shift, time-space conversion, arrayed waveguide grating, optical thresholding, optical quantization, optical coding