Optical MIDO – Multiple Inputs-Digital Output – device

Article history: Received 12 Sep. 2021 Received in revised form 29 Sep. 2021 Accepted 29 Sep. 2021 Available online 2 Nov. 2021 Advances in photonic technologies, with new processes and scopes of photonic integrated circuits, have generated a lot of interest as the field allows to obtain sensors with reduced size and cost and build systems with high interconnectivity and information density. In this work, answering the needs of photonic sensors that must be portable, more energy efficient, and more accurate than their electrical counterparts, also with a view to the emerging field of neuromorphic photonics, a versatile device is presented. The proposed device makes use of the well-known advantages provided by optical bistability. By combining two distributed feedback-multi quantum well semiconductor laser structures, this new optical multiple inputs digital output device offers various essential purposes (such as logic gates, wavelength detector and monitoring) with no need for specific manufacturing for each of them. Through a commercial computer-aided design tool, VPIphotonicsTM, the necessary characterization of proposed device is also described.