A Photonic Temporal Integrator With an Ultra-Long Integration Time Window Based on an InP-InGaAsP Integrated Ring Resonator

A photonic temporal integrator with an ultra-wide integration time window implemented based on a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) in an InP-InGaAsP material system consisting of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and current-injection phase modulators (PMs) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed photonic integrated integrator employs a ring structure coupled with two bypass waveguides. The tunable coupling between the ring and the waveguides is realized by a multi-mode interference (MMI) Mach-Zehnder interferometer coupler. Within the ring, two SOAs are incorporated to compensate for the insertion loss. In addition, there is a current injection PM in the ring for wavelength tuning. The use of the device provides a photonic temporal integrator with an ultra-wide integration time window and a tunable operation wavelength in a single PIC. The proposed integrator is fabricated and experimentally verified. The integration time window as wide as 6331 ps is achieved, which is an order of magnitude longer than that provided by the previously reported photonic integrators.