All-optical analog-to-digital converters based on cascaded 3-dB power splitters in 2D photonic crystals

In this paper, a new design of a photonic crystal (PC) all-optical analog-to-digital converter (ADC), which is based on cascaded 3-dB power splitters, is presented. It has been shown that by choosing appropriate threshold values in the output ports of the 3-dB power splitters, a set of unique states corresponding to different power levels of input analog signal can be obtained. It has been demonstrated that based on the proposed approach, the design of 2 and 3-bit PC ADC can be achievable.