Scalable intensity-based photonic matrix-vector multiplication processor using single-wavelength time-division-multiplexed signals

Abstract

Photonic integrated circuits provide a compact platform for ultrafast and energy-efficient matrix-vector multiplications (MVMs) in the optical domain. Recently, schemes based on time-division multiplexing (TDM) have been proposed as scalable approaches for realizing large-scale photonic MVM processors. However, existing demonstrations rely on coherent detection or multiple wavelengths, both of which complicate their operations. In this work, we demonstrate a scalable TDM-based photonic MVM processor that uses only single-wavelength intensity-modulated optical signals, thereby avoiding coherent detection and enabling simplified operations. A 32-channel processor is fabricated on a Si-on-insulator (SOI) platform and used to experimentally perform convolution operations in a convolutional neural network (CNN) for handwritten digit recognition, achieving a classification accuracy of 93.47% for 1500 images.