Towards integrated devices for ultra-fast all-optical signal processing in optical networks

Over the last decades, the internet traffic has been rapidly growing resulting in Terabits per second aggregate data throughputs. We have also been witnessing that the electronic signal processing the way it is known today is approaching its limitations due to a grooving manifestation of the electronic bottleneck. It is believed that the ultra-fast signal processing based on all-optical integrated devices (passive, active or both) could play an important role in communication systems of the future. In this paper we discuss integrated devices, approaches and techniques we have developed and demonstrated towards achieving these ambitious goals and leading also to improve the scalability of optical networks such as Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA), namely: all-optical ultrafast demultiplexers, self-clocked all-optical time gates, all-optical thresholders, filters, AWGs, tunable optical delay lines, and devices for dispersion management.