Researchers Develop New Optical Signal Processing Device for High-Speed Networks

As part of the European Union Framework 7 PHASORS project, a team of researchers led by Professor David Richardson at the University of Southampton have developed a new optical signal processing device which can be used for various applications such as high speed optical sensing and measurement.

The details of the research have been published in a paper titled “Multilevel quantization of optical phase in a novel coherent parametric mixer architecture”. Under this research a simple device was created which could be reconfigured according to the phase property of high speed light signals. The optical phase quantisation is equivalent to the manner in which electronic signals can adjust electric signals in such a way that the voltage is the same as the discrete value sets that are required for digital computing.

To establish this principle, in more clear terms the research team used the device to remove noise levels in an optical signal when it was being transmitted at 100Gbits/s. Researchers believe that this process could be scaled up to greater speeds by using less amount of power. This principle could also be used in applications which involve ultra-sensitive interferometers since light can be processed and controlled with greater flexibility. The research paper will be published in Nature Photonics.