The 10th IASTED International
Conference
on
Signal and Image Processing
~SIP 2008~
August 18 – 20, 2008
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, USA
INVITED SPEAKER
All-Optical Circuits for Ultrafast Information Processing and Computing
Abstract
The implementation of all-optical circuits for computing, information processing, and networking is widely recognized as a very promising approach to overcome the severe speed limitations currently imposed by electronic-based systems. Photonics technologies have the potential to enable processing speeds several orders of magnitude higher than with electronics. However, in photonics, there are still no equivalents to devices that form basic building blocks in electronic circuits, where fundamental signal processing operations can be realized using a simple combination of operational amplifiers, resistors, and capacitors. Thus, the design and realization of photonic devices to perform these fundamental operations over light waveforms is a necessary primary step towards the practical realization of all-optical computers and information processors. Two very relevant examples of basic building blocks for constructing all-optical signal processing circuits are a photonics temporal differentiator and a photonics temporal integrator. To give an example of their significance, in analogy with their electronic counterparts, these devices have been identified as key elements to build up ultrafast all-optical computing systems devoted to real-time solving of differential equations. It should be emphasized that these equations play a central role in virtually any field of science or engineering (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, economy, and the different branches of engineering). Our research group has recently proposed, developed and demonstrated the first set of devices for both photonics temporal differentiation and photonics temporal integration. Our experimentally demonstrated devices are capable of processing arbitrary optical signals with time features in the sub-picosecond range (corresponding to processing speeds in the terahertz regime), well beyond the reach of electronic technologies. As an additional advantage, the designs investigated by our group are based on compact and robust waveguide and/or all-fiber optics technologies, which could be readily incorporated in future integrated photonic circuits. This talk will provide an overview of the different designs for photonics temporal differentiation and integration recently demonstrated by our group. The potential of these developed basic devices for applications in all-optical computing and information processing, ultrafast coding and switching will be also discussed.
Biography of the Presenter
José Azaña received the Telecommunication Engineer degree (six years engineering program) and Ph.D. degree from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He completed part of his Ph.D. research at the University of Toronto (Canada) and University of California, Davis (USA).
From September 2001 to mid 2003 he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). In 2003, he joined the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), a graduate degree - granting research institute in Montreal, where he currently works as a Professor-Researcher. His research interests focus on fiber and integrated technologies for ultrafast optical signal processing and optical pulse shaping, for various applications, including fiber-optics telecommunications, optical computing, measurement and characterization of ultrafast events and photonics/optoelectronic components and devices, biomedical imaging, and ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave waveform generation and processing. His research work has resulted in more than 160 publications in top scientific and engineering journals and leading conferences, including about 90 publications in high-impact ISI journals and various (co-)invited presentations.
Prof. Azaña is a member of IEEE and OSA. He has served as a Guest Editor of the only two monographs entirely devoted to the emerging area of Optical Signal Processing, published by EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing (2005) and IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology (2006). Prof. Azaña was awarded with the XXII national prize for the "best doctoral thesis in data networks" from the Association of Telecommunication Engineers of Spain (2002) and with the "extraordinary prize for the best doctoral thesis" from his former university, UPM (2003). He is also the recipient of the 2008 IEEE-LEOS Young Investigator Award, recognizing outstanding scientific contributions to the area of photonics (broadly defined) before reaching the age of 35, for "pioneer contributions on innovative ultra-fast optical pulse processing techniques using all-fiber grating technologies".
