All-Optical Byte Recognition for 40-Gb/s Phase-Shift-Keyed Transmission Using a Planar-Lightwave-Circuit Passive Correlator

We demonstrate all-optical recognition of a byte pattern embedded in phase-shift-keyed data streaming at 40 Gb/s. We use matched filtering to generate an autocorrelation pulse indicating the pattern matching. Matched filtering is implemented using a reconfigurable silica planar-lightwave-circuit optical delay-line filter. We show excellent discrimination against spurious patterns consistent with the theoretical predictions.