Optical signal processor using electro-optic polymer waveguides

Abstract

We have investigated an optical signal processor using electro-optic polymer waveguides at 1.55 μm. As a result of recent polymer development many new optical devices are becoming available such as optical filters, modulators, switches, multiplexers, etc. It would be useful to have a single optical device, which is reconfigurable, to implement all of these optical devices functions. We call such a device an 'Optical Signal Processor', which will play a similar role as digital signal processors in electrical circuits. We have realized such an optical device using optical-delay-line circuits. Since optical-delay-line circuits are based on the multiple interference of coherent light and can be integrated with enough complexity, they have been utilized for purposes of optical processing such as optical filters. However, the guiding waveguides that were used are passive and the only mechanism used to reconfigure their functions has been thermal. This is slow and cannot be used for high speed applications such as optical modulators and optical packet switches. On the other hand, electro-optic polymers have a very high electro-optic coefficient with a good velocity match between the electrical and optical signals which makes them ideal for efficient, high speed, devices. Therefore, we have investigated delay line optical signal processor circuits using the electro-optic polymer waveguides. These structures are complex enough to generate arbitrary functions and fast enough to obtain high data rates. Using these optical signal processors, we have investigated interesting applications including arbitrary waveform generators.