Cover story: Wu YC, Yang QP, Shen BT et al. Multifunctional mixed analog/digital signal processor based on integrated photonics. Opto-Electron Sci 3, 240012 (2024).

Photonics signal processing provides a power-efficient and high-speed manner for a wide array of contemporary scenarios, compared to its electronic counterpart. Despite significant recent efforts to integrate photonics technologies and enhance signal processing systems in terms of Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), current solutions usually remain limited by their task-specific designs, lacking versatility across diverse applications.

To address this gap, the authors propose a novel chip-level signal processing system that integrates various active and passive components on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform with a compact and efficient manner. Through meticulous analysis and optimization at the device, system, and application levels, this architecture enables high-speed signal loading in either digital or analog form, and multi-dimensional operations, manipulating the frequency, amplitude, phase, and time delay of wideband optical signals.

The new system showcases exceptional versatility, facilitating three distinct tasks within a single chip, spanning optical computing, microwave photonics, and optical communications. It excels in key functions such as image processing, spectrum filtering, and electro-optical bandwidth equalization, demonstrating competitive performance. This development not only highlights the superiorities of photonics signal processing but also paves the way for more adaptable and high-performance chip-level solutions in the future.