Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution that can perform Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in a nontrivial computation by parallelism. The novel solution can be a device involving All Optical Fast Fourier Transform (OFFT) on Chip which has the benefits of being a high speed, low energy, and powerful signal processing tool. The novel solution can be used in optical communication and opto-electronic devices (including OFDM, optical processors/coprocessors), as well as computation devices (for example, in analog signal processing which can be used in aviation and aeronautics applications).
The disclosed invention can be implemented as either a system, a method, or as a device as can be appreciated. The system or method or device can include various aspects. For example, the OFFT can be an optical integrated chip capable of performing DFT in a nontrivial computation by parallelism. The disclosed invention can include several optical components such as Mach Zehnder Interferometer, couplers, phase shifters, modulators, and heaters. These optical components can be designed in a way to perform mathematical operations based on the simplified butterfly algorithm. In some embodiments, this optical integration can consist of stages which are predetermined by the order of the FFT. The disclosed invention can be fabricated on chip with all passive components, and another design is being implemented right now with some active components such as modulators for sampling to also be on chip.
Fig. 1 – Aspects of the disclosed Invention
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