40-gb/s 32-bit optical packet compressor-decompressor based on an optoelectronic memory

We propose a novel optical packet compressor-decompressor. It is based on an optoelectronic memory that employs a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor memory sandwiched between all-optical serial-to-parallel and photonic parallel-to-serial converters. Its optoelectronic scheme makes it possible to handle a long optical packet, and provides ultrafast burst-mode operation and flexible choice with regard to the center wavelength and/or spectral bandwidth of the output packet. We demonstrated both the 40-to-80-Gb/s compression and 40-to-10-Gb/s decompression of 32-bit optical packets.