Optical computing with semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

Abstract.  Increasing communication traffic and plans to increase various services may cause a serious problem towards the power consumption of network equipment. One of the causes of large power consumption in the present network is the multiplexing scheme, such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and electrical routing of the packet signals. WDM requires O/E (optical to electrical) and E/O (electrical to optical) signal conversion circuits with the same number as that of wavelength, resulting in an increase in power consumption. In addition to this electrical signal processing for the IP packet, routing, and switching at the router consumes a large amount of power. If we could process ultrafast signals using electromagnetic light waves without converting to electrical signals, this would reduce the power consumption of routers. One of the ways to overcome these problems is the development of all-optical computing devices. All-optical computing devices are based on the nonlinear interaction of light waves, which is an electromagnetic wave. The use of electromagnetic light waves makes computing, such as switching, possible at very high frequencies of more than 100 GHz. We discuss all-optical computing devices based on semiconductor optical amplifiers with the main emphasis on all-optical logic gates.