Optical RAM Row Access With WDM-Enabled All-Passive Row/Column Decoders

摘要

In this letter, we present new architectural perspectives in optical static RAM configurations by exploiting the wavelength dimension in address domain. We present a 2$,times,$4 optical RAM row decoder (RD) that relies its operation on an all-passive wavelength-selective filtering matrix ($lambda$-matrix), receiving WDM-formatted address bits (Wordline) as input. The 2$,times,$4 RD is followed by an semiconductor optical amplifier Mach–Zehnder interferometer access gate and a column decoding unit to provide complete optical RAM row access. Proof-of-concept experimental verification of a 2$,times,$ 4 optical RAM RD is shown at 10 Gb/s, providing error-free operation with a peak power penalty lower than 0.2 dB.