Mach–Zehnder Interferometer-based 3-bit all-optical sequence detector

Abstract

All-optical devices can support high data rate in a communication system compared with its electronic counterparts. Several all-optical logic devices can be implemented using Mach–Zehnder interferometers (MZIs). The MZI structure uses electro-optic effect to switch light across the titanium-diffused lithium niobate optical waveguide from cross-state to bar-state and vice versa. Sequence detector is a significant sequential circuit that detects the presence of predefined bit sequence in the input bit stream. The paper presents an all-optical 3-bit sequence detector that detects the bit sequence 110 from the main bit stream. The operations of the proposed device are analysed and verified using OptiBPM software. This all-optical device could be deployed in several optical switching and networking operations.