Fundamental limits on bandwidth, efficiency, and parallelism in all-optical and hybrid fan-in

摘要

We present an investigation of relationships among the information bandwidth, the optical power efficiency, and the degree of parallelism for optical interconnection architectures that employ optical fan-in. The foundation for these relationships is the Lagrange invariant, or, more specifically, the constant-radiance theorem. We show that, when restrictions imposed by the constant-radiance theorem are combined with requirements on the probability of error, an upper limit is placed on the bandwidth that is reduced as the fan-in ratio increases. These limitations are significantly more severe when optical fan-in is used to perform analog summations. We then define a measure of processing efficiency that takes into account the influence of optical input power on the probability of error and is used to interpret the results. #1997 Optical Society of America [S0740-3232(97)01010-7]