General-purpose programmable photonic processor for advanced radiofrequency applications
Daniel Pérez, Ana M. Gutierrez, David Sánchez-Jácome, Aitor López Hernández, Mikel Gutierrez, Erica Sánchez, Juan Pêdro Solano Fernández, Alejandro Cruz, Alberto Quirós, Zhenyun Xie, J. Benitez, Nándor Békési, Alejandro Santomé, Diego Pérez‐Galacho, Prometheus DasMahapatra, Andrés Macho, J. Capmany
Abstract
A general-purpose photonic processor can be built integrating a silicon photonic programmable core in a technology stack comprising an electronic monitoring and controlling layer and a software layer for resource control and programming. This processor can leverage the unique properties of photonics in terms of ultra-high bandwidth, high-speed operation, and low power consumption while operating in a complementary and synergistic way with electronic processors. These features are key in applications such as next-generation 5/6 G wireless systems where reconfigurable filtering, frequency conversion, arbitrary waveform generation, and beamforming are currently provided by microwave photonic subsystems that cannot be scaled down. Here we report the first general-purpose programmable processor with the remarkable capability to implement all the required basic functionalities of a microwave photonic system by suitable programming of its resources. The processor is fabricated in silicon photonics and incorporates the full photonic/electronic and software stack.