All-optical KarhunenLoeve Transform Using Multimode Interference Structures on Silicon Nanowires

Abstract

A variety of unitary transforms have attracted considerable attention for their application in data, image compression and other signal processing applications. Among many transforms, the KarhunenLoeve transform (KLT) is known to be optimal because of its advantages of computational efficiency, residual correlation and rate distortion criterion. In this paper, it is shown that the all-optical KarhunenLoeve transform can be realized using multimode interference (MMI) structures on silicon wire waveguides. The transfer matrix method (TMM) and the beam propagation method (BPM) are used to verify and optimally design the proposed devices.