Integrated Photonic Fractional Convolution Accelerator

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel integrated photonic circuit architecture that performs fractional convolution operations using Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform, enabling tasks like smoothing and edge detection even with noisy signals.

Contribution

The work introduces a new integrated photonic design utilizing nonuniform waveguide lattices for fractional convolution, advancing photonic computing capabilities.

Findings

Successfully performs smoothing and edge detection on noisy signals

Numerical simulations validate the effectiveness of the architecture

Demonstrates potential for real-time photonic signal processing

Abstract

An integrated photonic circuit architecture to perform a modified-convolution operation based on the Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform (DFrFT) is introduced. This is accomplished by utilizing two nonuniformly-coupled waveguide lattices with equally-spaced eigenmode spectra and with different lengths that perform DFrDT operations of complementary orders sandwiching a modulator array. Numerical simulations show that smoothing and edge detection tasks are indeed performed even for noisy input signals.