an optical processing arrangement 1 shown in fig1 comprises two all - optical blocks or sub - assemblies : a compact all - optical function and an optical logic and function . the compact function has as an input the dpsk packets and n continuous wave ( cw ) lightwaves produced by respective lasers ( with n the number of label bits ) and produces two synchronous outputs : the dpsk demodulated data packet ( referenced ‘ a ’ in fig1 ) and a sequence of n generated coloured pulses synchronous to the demodulated label bits ( referenced ‘ b ’ in fig1 ). the demodulated label bits and the synchronous n coloured pulses are fed into the optical logic and gate . as a result , the label pattern will be transferred to the n coloured pulses . thus , by using an arrayed waveguide grating ( awg ) the coloured pulses can be separated in space at distinct outputs ( referenced ‘ c ’ in fig1 ), representing the parallel copy of the label pattern . the parallelized bits can be photo - detected and elaborated electrically or processed all - optically . the compact all - optical function shown in fig1 comprises a linear optical amplifier loa and a one - bit delay interferometer di , followed downstream by a wavelength - dependent delay line ( wdl ) [ 7 ]. the incoming dpsk packets are multiplexed by an awg ( which serves as a wavelength - multiplexer ) with the n local cw lightwaves and fed into the optical circuit . the loa combined with the di acts as an optical switch [ 10 ], where the packet acts as the pump and the cw lightwaves as probes . in the loa , the constant - envelope dpsk packet induces a cross - phase modulation on all the cw probes proportional to the packet intensity . passing through the di , the phase modulated cw probes are converted to amplitude modulation . as light emerges at the di output only if the signal and the one - bit delayed signal have significantly different phase , n coloured pulses synchronous with the beginning of the packet and with the end of the packet are formed at the rise and fall edges of the packet . simultaneously the di also demodulates the original dpsk label packet . the demodulated dpsk packet and the synchronized n coloured pulses at the di output are fed into the wdl . the wdl comprises fibre bragg gratings ( fbgs ) which are centred at each wavelength of the laser probes and are placed at multiple distances so that the reflected coloured pulses form a sequence of n pulses with a pulse repetition equal to the label pulse repetition . thus , the reflected coloured pulse sequence emerges at the port 3 of the optical circulator oc . the demodulated dpsk packets being at a different wavelength to the fbgs pass through the fbgs . as a result , the outputs of the compact function , a and b , consist of the demodulated dpsk label and the sequence of n - coloured pulses . output a passes through a ebrium doped fibre amplifier edfa and a bandpass filter bpf before being input into the optical and function . the optical logic and function comprises a terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer ( toad ) [ 11 ]. as shown in fig1 the toad consists of an optical loop containing as a nonlinear element another loa , which is placed with an offset δt with respect to the centre of the loop . the control pulse is coupled into the loop via a 90 : 10 coupler . the control pulse opens a switching window of 2 δt . when an optical input pulse enters the toad , the pulse power is split by a 50 : 50 coupler into a clock - wise pulse ( cw ) and counter - clockwise pulse ( ccw ). if no control pulse is applied , the cw - and ccw pulses propagating through the loop recombine in phase at the coupler and then the resulting pulse is reflected back at the input port . if a control pulse arrives at the loa after the cw pulse has passed through but before the ccw pulse arrives at the loa , the ccw pulse experiences a different gain and refractive index induced by the control pulse . at the coupler , the cw - and ccw pulses recombine out of phase , thus the pulse is switched at the toad output [ 11 ]. note that the time required by the toad to switch the next pulse ( the switching repetition ) is determined by the recovery time of the loa [ 11 ]. therefore , in the case of switching a sequence of pulses the employed loa should have a recovery time faster than the pulse rate . the optical logic and between the sequence of n pulses ( as toad input ) and the demodulated label bits ( as control signal ) is simply obtained at the output of the toad by filtering out the control signal . note that , since the coloured sequence contains only a number of pulses equal to the label bits , the and operation between the payload and the remainder of the sequence does not produce any pulse . for the same reason , since the n - pulses sequence produced at the packet end falling within the packet &# 39 ; s guard time , the and operation between those n pulses and the packet &# 39 ; s guardtime produces no pulse as well . details of an exemplary set - up of the arrangement of fig1 are as follows . a cw laser at 1538 . 9 nm is modulated by an intensity modulator acting as optical gate to generate packets with guard - time of 3 . 2 ns . then a linbo 3 phase modulator driven by a pattern generator ( pg ) at 10 gbit / s was used to modulate the packets . a programmed sequence of three packets with different labels was periodically produced by the pg . the three labels consisting of four bits each had a pattern of l 1 =‘ 1 1 1 1 ’, l 2 =‘ 1 0 1 1 ’, and l 3 =‘ 1 0 0 1 ’, respectively . note that the repetition of the label bits is of 550 ps to match the delays imposed by the fbgs based wdl . four cw lasers ( from λ 1 = 1557 . 34 nm to λ 4 = 1559 , 77 nm , spaced by 0 . 8 nm ) were coupled with the packet and fed into the compact function . the total power of the four probes and the power of the dpsk packets at the loa input were 4 dbm and 5 . 8 dbm , respectively . the loa had a 14 db of small - signal gain and saturation output power of ˜ 10 dbm at 240 ma , a polarization dependent gain 1 . 4 db , and a gain recovery time of around 100 ps . note that exploiting the higher saturation power of the loa allows the increase of the probes power and then a higher power of the converted signal or equivalently increasing the number of probes [ 10 ]. the bit - delay in the di was 100 ps to demodulate the dpsk 10 gbit / s packets . the fbgs in the wdl centred at the cws wavelength introduced an integer multiples of 550 ps wavelength dependent delay to generate a sequence of pulses with a repetition equal to the label bit - rate . the demodulated dpsk packets after the di are shown in fig2 a , where the three different labels with pattern l 1 , l 2 , and l 3 , can be seen . the 4 - pulse sequences generated at the beginning and at end of each packet ( we recall that only the sequences at the beginning are relevant ) are shown in fig2 b . the magnification of the 4 - coloured pulses is also shown . the pulses are positioned at integer multiples of 550 ps as expected . the measured extinction ratio of the pulses is around 14 db . the demodulated dpsk bits were amplified by an edfa and filtered by a band pass filter ( bpf ) before to be fed into the toad via a 10 : 90 coupler . the 4 - pulses were delayed by a fixed delay line ( dl ) to compensate the longer path experienced by the demodulated dpsk signal and then fed into the toad . the average optical power of the demodulated signal after the 10 : 90 coupler and the 4 - pulses is 3 . 3 dbm and − 10 dbm , respectively . the loa in the toad has similar characteristic of the loa in the compact all - optical function . the driving current is 180 ma . the toad switching window is around 80 ps . the output of the toad is demultiplexed by the awg , which outputs λ 1 , . . . , λ 4 representing the parallel bits are shown in fig2 c - 2 f . indeed , it can be clearly seen that for packets with label l 1 (‘ 1 1 1 1 ’) a pulse appears at the four outputs , while for packets with l 2 (‘ 1 0 1 1 ’) only λ 1 , . . . , λ 3 and λ 4 present a pulse , and finally for packets with l 3 (‘ 1 0 0 1 ’) a pulse appears only for λ 1 and λ 4 . the measured extinction ratio of pulses is around 12 db . thus , those results provide evidences that the serial label bits are converted to parallel output ports . the novel asynchronous all - optical circuit advantageously simultaneously extracts and parallelizes the label bits of dpsk packets . as the main advantage of the technique , it requires only two optical switch assemblies . parallelization of a high number of bits just requires a higher number of cw lightwaves and fbgs with no substantial modification of the setup . moreover , the use of only two switches hugely reduces the power consumptions and the potential complexity for photonic integration of the circuit . the operation described above employed 10 gbit / s data packets . however , circuit operation at much higher bit rate is feasible as the technique is sensitive only to the ( constant ) envelope of the dpsk signal , which makes the function bit - rate transparent , and , as it is well known , the toad can operate at very high bit rate [ 11 ]. moreover , the circuit being asynchronous no synchronization circuit for packet / bit is needed , reducing the complexity of the cross - connect node . finally , the circuit is polarization independent and can in principle work also with ook packets by adding an optical packet envelope detector pre - processor . a . h . gnauck , p . j . winzer , ‘ optical phase - shift - keyed transmission ,’ ieee journal of lightwave technology , vol . 23 , pp . 115 - 130 , 2005 . d . klonidis , c . t . politi , r . nejabati , m . j . o &# 39 ; 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