40-Gbit/s 16-bit burst optical packet generator based on photonic parallel-to-serial conversion

We propose a burst optical packet generator based on a novel photonic parallel-to-serial conversion scheme, and demonstrate 40-Gbit/s 16-bit optical packet generation from 16-ch parallel low-voltage TTL data streams. It consists of electrical 4:1 parallel-to-serial converters that employ InP metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors, and an optical time-domain multiplexer with electroabsorption modulators. The proposed optical packet generator is suitable for burst optical packet generation and overcomes the electronic bandwidth limitation, which is prerequisite for achieving high-speed photonic packet switched networks. In addition, it can be driven by simple low-cost low-power CMOS logic circuits, and is compact and extensible in terms of the number of input channels due to the effective combination of electrical and optical multiplexing.