Abstract

Free-space optical interconnects offer a large spatial and temporal bandwidth, which is of interest for applications in VLSI systems and in all-optical computers. Space-variant interconnects, such as the perfect shuffle or cyclic shifting operations, are more useful than space-invariant interconnects but are harder to implement optically. One approach to implementing space-variant interconnects is to use optical systems consisting of lenslet arrays with one lenslet for each input pixel or group of pixels.¹,² In this paper, we investigate the use of diffractive lenslet arrays for this purpose. The lenslets are implemented as phase components with discrete, multiple phase steps by means of photolithographic fabrication techniques.

© 1990 Optical Society of America