On-Chip Low-Power Gray Code Generation Based on Opto-Mechanical Microring Resonators

IEEE Photonics Journal

Li Liu¹  Yue Yang¹  Jin Yue²  Shasha Liao³ 

[1] School of Automation, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China;School of Optical and Electrical Information, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China;The Key Lab of Mobile Communication Technology, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Chongqing, China;

关键词: Optical encoder;    opto-mechanical microring resonator;    low-power;    great extendibility;   

DOI  :  10.1109/JPHOT.2020.2986188

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

We propose and experimentally demonstrate on-chip energy-efficient Gray code generation based on a scalable and compact optical encoder. The operation principle of the integrated encoder is based on the nonlinear effects in silicon opto-mechanical microring resonators (MRRs), which could be excited by ultra-low input powers. By adjusting the input powers with hierarchical power levels, the red-shifts of the MRR transmission spectrum could be flexibly manipulated. In this case, the output powers of the MRR drop-port and through-port could be controllable and switchable to generate different codes. Through tuning the optical encoding powers in a specific rule, 4-bit and 2-bit Gray codes have been successfully demonstrated. The required power of the proposed 4-bit encoder is as low as -6 dBm, which is favorable to build energy-efficient optical encoding systems. To the best of our knowledge, we have realized a nano-mechanical optical encoder with the lowest required power. Moreover, the encoder structure has great scalability, thus 2N-bit Gray code could be generated by utilizing 2N-1 add-drop MRRs. With the dominant advantages of ultra-low power consumption (-6 dBm), compact size (0.08 mm²) and great scalability, the proposed optical encoder has many significant applications in optical encoding and communication chips.

【 授权许可】

Unknown