Optical arithmetic unit using bit-WDM

A novel arithmetic unit is proposed consisting of a pipelined optical ripple carry adder that adds two words with bits multiplexed by different wavelengths on a single fiber. The addition result is returned to a fiber bus in the same format as the incoming words. The corresponding operand bit pairs are split off the fiber using wavelength division demultiplexers. Full adders compute the sum for each bit pair and the carry from the next lower significant bit pair. The full adder uses couplers and NOT, NOR and novel XOR logic gates constructed using semiconductor optical amplifiers for gain and wavelength shifting.