Dear Colleagues,

The arrival of the big data era has fueled the increasing demand on both high-speed signal transmission and ultrafast signal processing. Optical signal processing is a promising technique to facilitate ultrafast signal processing in the optical domain, which can avoid cumbersome optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion. Optical signal processing brings together various fields of optics and signal processing, e.g., linear and nonlinear optics enable various processing functions in analog and digital signals, with data information encoded in different physical dimensions (amplitude, phase, wavelength/frequency, polarization, and spatial structure) of lightwaves. Recent advances in mechanisms, materials, devices/platforms and techniques have motivated wide optical signal processing applications, such as wavelength conversion, (de)multiplexing, multicasting, logic gate, computing, switching, true time delay, optical buffer, regeneration, etc. Optical signal processing may open up new perspectives to ultrafast signal processing for high-speed optical communications and superior network performance.

This Special Issue aims to explore the recent enabling devices and techniques motivating optical signal processing. It will focus on the state-of-the-art advances and future perspectives of optical signal processing.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Mechanisms, materials, devices/platforms, techniques for optical signal processing.
• Linear optics and various optical nonlinearities for optical signal processing.
• Semiconductor optical amplifiers, highly nonlinear fiber, periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides, photonic integrated circuits, graphene for optical signal processing.
• Chip-scale optical signal processing on silicon platforms.
• Modulation and detection of multi-level modulation signals in coherent optical communications.
• High-base optical signal processing for multi-level modulation signals.
• Optical signal processing exploiting the spatial structure of lightwaves.
• High-speed electronics assisted advanced digital signal processing (DSP) for optical signal processing.
• Various optical signal processing functions, such as wavelength conversion, (de)multiplexing, multicasting, logic gate, computing, switching, true time delay, optical buffer, regeneration, etc.

Prof. Jian Wang
Prof. Antonella Bogoni
Guest Editors

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