An electro-optic reconfigurable OR to Ex-OR gate based on microring resonator loaded on Mach–Zehnder interferometric structure

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a novel electro-optic reconfigurable OR to Ex-OR gate and vice-versa. The proposed design consists of two microring resonators (MRR), employed in parallel, in a Mach–Zehnder interferometric (MZI) structure’s upper and lower arms with a tunable phase shifter attached in its lower arm, and can be controlled externally. The design will work as an OR gate when the phase of the tunable phase shifter is 0, and it will work as an Ex-OR gate when the phase is ‘π’. The micro-ring resonator employs an electro-optic modulation technique based on carrier injection, with electrical voltage sets 2 V and -1.85 V respectively for logic 1 and logic 0. We have also studied the performance of the Ex-OR gate when the phase shift deviates from the ideal required value. The extinction ratio obtained for Ex-OR operation is 17 dB and for OR operation it is 7.58 dB respectively. To demonstrate the circuit’s working operation at a data rate of 10 Gbps, @1550 nm time domain simulations were carried out with two electrical information bit streams fed into it.