Low-cost high-speed multichannel fiber-optic correlator.

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Signal Processing
• Microelectronics

Background:

• Multichannel fiber-optic correlators are crucial for signal processing.
• Expanding channel capacity often increases cost and complexity.
• Maintaining high speed during multichannel expansion is a key challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate methods for expanding the number of channels in a multichannel fiber-optic correlator.
• To reduce the cost of multichannel architectures without compromising processing speed.
• To optimize delay line implementation for improved correlation function generation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a microwave switchable delay line to expand correlator channels.
• Replaced an optical tree with an electrical tree and employed double-gate metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors for AND operations.
• Implemented a hybrid approach, using optical delays for >5 ns and microwave delays for <5 ns.

Main Results:

• Successfully expanded the number of channels in the multichannel fiber-optic correlator.
• Demonstrated two cost-reduction techniques for the multichannel architecture.
• Achieved 20 points of the correlation function for a 500-MHz signal.
• Maintained high processing speed with the implemented methods.

Conclusions:

• The proposed methods enable simple expansion of channels in fiber-optic correlators.
• Cost-effective multichannel architectures can be realized without speed reduction.
• A hybrid optical-microwave delay implementation is effective for high-speed signal correlation.