Abstract

We present photonic circuits for temporal processing of photonic signals by a controlled variation in the delay of a photonic signal path. Since they provide variable delay in increments of some fixed elementary value, we call them variable integer delays. We present three structures, called parallel, series re-entrant, and series feed-forward. One application is in a photonic time-slot interchanged Pl in which all the data from an input time-slot experience the appropriate delay to emerge in the assigned time-slot in the output. We optimize two parameters: the total number of switches in the structure (roughly proportional to cost) and the number of switches through which any photonic signal must pass (roughly proportional to insertion loss).

© 1987 Optical Society of America