Abstract

The bandwidth and the efficiency of fiber optic communication systems exceed these of electrical cable systems. However, presently, we are far from realizing the potential performance of optical networks. Electronic devices and systems connected to optical networks may reach bit-rates on the order of 1 Gb/s. In contrast, the maximum bit-rate of a photonic network may exceed 1 Tb/s, limited by the performance of the optical fiber. The three order-of-magnitude mismatch between fiber and device capacity can be used to increase the speed, security, and reliability in the data transmission. Several all-optical methods exploiting this bit-rate mismatch are being investigated for controlling data streams in communication channels to utilize this bandwidth more efficiently. These approaches may include mutual conversion of the space-to-time, space-to-frequency, spatial frequency-to-time and spatial frequency-to-temporal frequency. The possibility of converting optical image or image-like parallel data into the optical fiber has been demonstrated by using a pair of moving gratings to introduce spatial-to-temporal encoding¹. In this manuscript we introduce a holographic method that allows parallel-to-serial (i.e., space-to- time) optical signal conversion by encoding spatial frequency spectrum of the parallel optical signals onto the temporal frequency spectrum of optical pulses. Moreover, by combining our technique with existing serial-to-parallel conversion methods^2,3 we demonstrate the possibility of transmitting parallel optical signals over long distance optical fiber network.

© 1995 Optical Society of America