We review our research progress of multi-port optical switches based on the silicon photonics platform. Up to now, the maximum port-count is 32 input ports×32 output ports, in which transmissions of all paths were demonstrated. The switch topology is path-independent insertion-loss (PILOSS) which consists of an array of 2×2 element switches and intersections. The switch presented an average fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of 10.8 dB. Moreover, -20-dB crosstalk bandwidth of 14.2 nm was achieved with output-port-exchanged element switches, and an average polarization-dependent loss (PDL) of 3.2 dB was achieved with a non-duplicated polarization-diversity structure enabled by SiN overpass waveguides. In the 8×8 switch, we demonstrated wider than 100-nm bandwidth for less than -30-dB crosstalk with double Mach-Zehnder element switches, and less than 0.5 dB PDL with polarization diversity scheme which consisted of two switch matrices and fiber-type polarization beam splitters. Based on the switch performances described above, we discuss further improvement of switching performances.

A compact silicon photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) slow-light modulator is presented. The proposed modulator is capable of achieving a 64 Gbps bit-rate in a wide operating spectrum. The slow-light enhances the modulation efficiency in proportion to its group index ng. Two types of 200-µm-long PCW modulators are presented. These are low- and high-dispersion devices, which are implemented using a complementary metal-oxide-insulator process. The lattice-shifted PCW achieved low-dispersion slow-light and exhibited ng ≈ 20 with an operating spectrum Δλ ≈ 20 nm, in which the fluctuation of the extinction ratio is ±0.5 dB. The PCW device without the lattice shift exhibited high-dispersion, for which a large or small value of ng can be set on demand by changing the wavelength. It was found that for a large ng, the frequency response was degraded due to the electro-optic phase mismatch between the RF signals and slow-light even for such small-size modulators. Meander-line electrodes, which bypass and delay the RF signals to compensate for the phase mismatch, are proposed. A high cutoff frequency of 55 GHz was theoretically predicted, whereas the experimentally measured value was 38 GHz. A high-quality open eye pattern for a drive voltage of 1 V at 32 Gbps was observed. The clear eye pattern was maintained for 50-64 Gbps, although the drive voltage increased to 3.5-5.3 V. A preliminary operation of a 2-bits pulse amplitude modulation up to 100 Gbps was also attempted.

Horizontal slot waveguides enable light to be strongly confined in thin regions. The strong confinement of light in the slot region offers the advantages of enhancing the interaction of light with matter and providing highly sensitive sensing devices. We theoretically investigated fundamental characteristics of horizontal slot waveguides using Nb2O5. The coupling coefficient between SiO2 slot and air slot waveguides was calculated. Characteristics of bending loss in slot waveguide were also analyzed. The etching conditions in reactive ion etching needed to obtain a sidewall with high verticality were studied. We propose a process for fabricating horizontal slot waveguides using Nb2O5 thin film deposition and selective etching of SiO2. Horizontal slot waveguides were fabricated that had an SiO2 slot of less than 30 nm SiO2. The propagated light passing through the slot waveguides was also obtained.

We demonstrated a compact 16×16 multicast switch (MCS) made from a silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC). The switch utilizes a new electrical connection method based on surface mount technology (SMT). Five electrical connectors are soldered directly to the PLC by using the standard reflow process used for electrical devices. We reduced the chip size to half of one made with conventional wire bonding technology. We obtained satisfactory solder contacts and excellent switching properties. These results indicate that the proposed method is suitable for large-scale optical switches including MCSs, variable optical attenuators, dispersion compensators, and so on.

In recent years, deep neural network (DNN) has achieved considerable results on many artificial intelligence tasks, e.g. natural language processing. However, the computation complexity of DNN is extremely high. Furthermore, the performance of traditional von Neumann computing architecture has been slowing down due to the memory wall problem. Processing in memory (PIM), which places computation within memory and reduces the data movement, breaks the memory wall. ReRAM PIM is thought to be a available architecture for DNN accelerators. In this work, a novel design of ReRAM neuromorphic system is proposed to process DNN fully in array efficiently. The binary ReRAM array is composed of 2T2R storage cells and current mirror sense amplifiers. A dummy BL reference scheme is proposed for reference voltage generation. A binary DNN (BDNN) model is then constructed and optimized on MNIST dataset. The model reaches a validation accuracy of 96.33% and is deployed to the ReRAM PIM system. Co-design model optimization method between hardware device and software algorithm is proposed with the idea of utilizing hardware variance information as uncertainness in optimization procedure. This method is analyzed to achieve feasible hardware design and generalizable model. Deployed with such co-design model, ReRAM array processes DNN with high robustness against fabrication fluctuation.

This paper discusses a static analysis problem, called absolute consistency problem, for relational schema mappings. A given schema mapping is said to be absolutely consistent if every source instance has a corresponding target instance. Absolute consistency is an important property because it guarantees that data exchange never fails for any source instance. Originally, for XML schema mappings, the absolute consistency problem was defined and its complexity was investigated by Amano et al. However, as far as the authors know, there are no known results for relational schema mappings. In this paper, we focus on relational schema mappings such that both the source and the target schemas have functional dependencies, under the assumption that mapping rules are defined by constant-free tuple-generating dependencies. In this setting, we show that the absolute consistency problem is in coNP. We also show that it is solvable in polynomial time if the tuple-generating dependencies are full and the size of the left-hand side of each functional dependency is bounded by some constant. Finally, we show that the absolute consistency problem is coNP-hard even if the source schema has no functional dependency and the target schema has only one; or each of the source and the target schemas has only one functional dependency such that the size of the left-hand side of the functional dependency is at most two.

In this letter, motivated by the research of Tian et al., two constructions of asymptotically optimal codebooks in regard to the Welch bound with additive and multiplicative characters are provided. The parameters of constructed codebooks are new, which are different from those in the letter of Tian et al.

We propose an ultra-low inter-core crosstalk (XT) multi-core fiber (MCF) with standard 125-μm cladding. We show the fiber design and fabrication results of an MCF housing four cores with W-shaped index profile; it offers XT of less than -67dB/km over the whole C+L band. This enables us to realize 10,000-km transmission with negligible XT penalty. We also observe a low-loss of 0.17dB/km (average) at a wavelength of 1.55μm and other optical properties compatible with ITU-T G.654.B fiber. We also elucidate its good micro-bend resistance in terms of both the loss and XT to confirm its applicability to high-density optical fiber cables. Finally, we show that the fabricated MCF is feasible along with long-distance transmission by confirming that the XT noise performance corresponds to transmission distances of 10,000km or more.

The 2019 Typhoon Hagibis (No. 19) caused widespread destruction in eastern Japan. During the disaster, many tweets including rescue request hashtags such as #救助 (meaning #Rescue) and #救助要請 (meaning #Rescue_request) were posted on Twitter. An official disaster information account of the Nagano Prefectural Government asked the public to provide information in the form of damage reports and rescue requests using the hashtag #台風19号長野県被害 (#Typhoon_No.19_Nagano_Prefecture_damage). As a result, many tweets were posted using this hashtag. Moreover, the account contacted the posters of tweets requesting rescue and delivered the information to the Fire Department. In this study, we analyze the circumstances of the above tweets.

We demonstrated 1-Tb/s-class transmissions of field-deployed large-core low-loss fiber links, which is compliant with ITU-T G.654.E, using our newly developed real-time transponder consisting of a state-of-the-art 16-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) based digital signal processing application-specific integrated circuit (DSP-ASIC) and an indium phosphide (InP) based high-bandwidth coherent driver modulator (HB-CDM). In this field experiment, we have achieved record transmission distances of 1122km for net data-rate 1-Tb/s transmission with dual polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) 32 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals, and of 336.6 km for net data-rate 1.2-Tb/s transmission with dual PDM-64QAM signals. This is the first demonstration of applying hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and backward-distributed Raman amplifier were applied to terrestrial G.654.E fiber links. We also confirmed the stability of signal performance over field fiber transmission in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) condition. The Q-factor fluctuations respectively were only less than or equal to 0.052dB and 0.07dB for PDM-32QAM and PDM-64QAM signals within continuous measurements for 60 minutes.

We fabricated an InP-based dual-polarization In-phase and Quadrature (DP-IQ) modulator consisting of a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulator array integrated with RF termination resistors and backside via holes for high-bandwidth coherent driver modulators and revealed its high reliability. These integrations allowed the chip size (Chip size: 4.4mm×3mm) to be reduced by 59% compared with the previous chip without these integrations, that is, the previous chip needed 8 chip-resistors for terminating RF signals and 12 RF electrode pads for the electrical connection with these resistors in a Signal-Ground-Signal configuration. This MZ modulator exhibited a 3-dB bandwidth of around 40 GHz as its electrical/optical response, which is sufficient for over 400 Gbit/s coherent transmission systems using 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and 64QAM signals. Also, we investigated a rapid degradation which affects the reliability of InP-based DP-IQ modulators. This rapid degradation we called optical damage is caused by strong incident light power and a high reverse bias voltage condition at the entrance of an electrode in each arm of the MZ modulators. This rapid degradation makes it difficult to estimate the lifetime of the chip using an accelerated aging test, because the value of the breakdown voltage which induces optical damage varies considerably depending on conditions, such as light power, operation wavelength, and chip temperature. Therefore, we opted for the step stress test method to investigate the lifetime of the chip. As a result, we confirmed that optical damage occurred when photo-current density at the entrance of an electrode exceeded threshold current density and demonstrated that InP-based modulators did not degrade unless operation conditions reached threshold current density. This threshold current density was independent of incident light power, operation wavelength and chip temperature.

We propose a nonphotorealistic rendering method for generating checkered pattern images from photographic images. The proposed method is executed by iterative calculation using a Prewitt filter with an expanded window size and can automatically generate checkered patterns according to changes in edges and shade of photographic images. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an experiment was conducted using various photographic images. An additional experiment was conducted to visually confirm the checkered pattern images generated by changing the iteration number, window size, and parameter to emphasize the checkered patterns.

Effective user accommodation will be more and more important in passive optical networks (PONs) in the next decade since the number of subscribers has been leveling off as well and it is becoming more difficult for network operators to keep sufficient numbers of maintenance workers. Drastically reducing the number of small-scale communication buildings while keeping the number of accommodated users is one of the most attractive solutions to meet this situation. To achieve this, we propose two types of long-reach repeater-free upstream transmission configurations for PON systems; (i) one utilizes a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as a pre-amplifier and (ii) the other utilizes distributed Raman amplification (DRA) in addition to the SOA. Our simulations assuming 10G-EPON specifications and transmission experiments on a 10G-EPON prototype confirm that configuration (i) can add a 17km trunk fiber to a normal PON system with 10km access reach and 1 : 64 split (total 27km reach), while configuration (ii) can further expand the trunk fiber distance to 37km (total 47km reach). Network operators can select these configurations depending on their service areas.

With the rapid development of scientific research, the number of publications, such as scientific papers and patents, has grown rapidly. It becomes increasingly important to identify those with high quality and great impact from such a large volume of publications. Citation count is one of the well-known indicators of the future impact of the publications. However, how to interpret a large number of uncertain factors of publications as relevant features and utilize them to capture the impact of publications over time is still a challenging problem. This paper presents an approach that effectively leverages a variety of factors with a neural-based citation prediction model. Specifically, the proposed model is based on the Neural Hawkes Process (NHP) with the continuous-time Long Short-Term Memory (cLSTM), which can capture the aging effect and the phenomenon of sleeping beauty more effectively from publication covariates as well as citation counts. The experimental results on two datasets show that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines. In addition, the contribution of covariates to performance improvement is also verified.

Contextual information is a crucial factor in natural language processing tasks such as sequence labeling. Previous studies on contextualized embedding and word embedding have explored the context of word-level tokens in order to obtain useful features of languages. However, unlike it is the case in English, the fundamental task in East Asian languages is related to character-level tokens. In this paper, we propose a contextualized character embedding method using n-gram multi-sequences information with long short-term memory (LSTM). It is hypothesized that contextualized embeddings on multi-sequences in the task help each other deal with long-term contextual information such as the notion of spans and boundaries of segmentation. The analysis shows that the contextualized embedding of bigram character sequences encodes well the notion of spans and boundaries for word segmentation rather than that of unigram character sequences. We find out that the combination of contextualized embeddings from both unigram and bigram character sequences at output layer rather than the input layer of LSTMs improves the performance of word segmentation. The comparison showed that our proposed method outperforms the previous models.

A high degree of freedom in spectral domain allows us to accommodate additional optical signal processing for wavelength division multiplexing in photonic analog-to-digital conversion. We experimentally verified a spectral compression to save a necessary bandwidth for soliton self-frequency shift based optical quantization through the cascade of the four-wave mixing based and the sum-frequency generation based spectral compression. This approach can realize 0.03 nm individual bandwidth correspond to save up to more than 85 percent of bandwidth for 7-bit optical quantization in C-band.

Magneto-optical (MO) switches operate with a dynamically applied magnetic field. The MO devices presented in this paper consist of microring resonators (MRRs) fabricated on amorphous silicon-on-garnet platform. Two types of MO switches with MRRs were developed. In the first type, the switching state is controlled by an external magnetic field component included in the device. By combination of MO and thermo-optic effects, wavelength tunable operation is possible without any additional heater, and broadband switching is achievable. The other type of switch is a self-holding optical switch integrated with an FeCoB thin-film magnet. The switching state is driven by the remanence of the integrated thin-film magnet, and the state is maintained without any power supply.

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) scheme is used widely in photonic metro-core networks. In a WDM network, wavelength continuity constraint is employed to simply construct relay nodes. This constraint reduces the wavelength usage efficiency of each link. To improve the same, an all-optical wavelength converter (AO-WC) has been attracting attention in recent years. In particular, an AO-WC is a key device because it enables simultaneous conversion of multiple wavelengths of signal lights to other wavelengths, independent of the modulation format. However, each AO-WC requires installation of multiple laser sources with narrow bandwidth because the lights emitted by the laser sources are used as pump lights when the wavelengths of the signal lights are converted by the four-wave mixing (FWM) process. To reduce the number of laser sources, we propose a remote pumped AO-WC, in which the laser sources of the pump lights are aggregated into several relay nodes. When the request for the wavelength conversion from the relay node without the laser source is conveyed, the relay node with the laser source transmits the pump light through the optical link. The proposed scheme enables reduction in the number of laser sources of the pump lights. Herein we analyze the distortion of the pump light by propagating it through the optical link We also evaluate the effect of the noise in optical amplifiers and nonlinearities in optical fibers using numerical simulations employing the representative parameters for a practical WDM network.

In this letter, the structural analysis of nonbinary cyclic and quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with α-multiplied parity-check matrices (PCMs) is concerned. Using analytical methods, several structural parameters of nonbinary cyclic and QC LDPC codes with α-multiplied PCMs are determined. In particular, some classes of nonbinary LDPC codes constructed from finite fields and finite geometries are shown to have good minimum and stopping distances properties, which may explain to some extent their wonderful decoding performances.

We developed a polarization-independent and reserved-band-less complementary spectral inverted optical phase conjugation (CSI-OPC) device using dual-band difference frequency generation based on highly efficient periodically poled LiNbO3 waveguide technologies. To examine the nonlinearity mitigation in a long-haul transmission using a large number of OPCs, we installed a CSI-OPC device in the middle of a pure silica core fiber-based recirculating loop transmission line with a length of 320km. First, we examined the fiber-input power tolerance after 5,120-km and 6,400-km transmission using 22.5-Gbaud PDM-16QAM 10-channel DWDM signals and found a Q-factor improvement of over 1.3dB along with enhanced power tolerance thanks to mitigating the fiber nonlinearity. We then demonstrated transmission distance extension using the CSI-OPC device. The use of multiple CSI-OPCs enables an obvious performance improvements attained by extending the transmission distance from 6,400km to 8,960km, which corresponds to applying the CSI-OPC device 28 times. Moreover, there was no Q-factor degradation for the link in a linear regime after applying the CSI-OPC device more than 16 times. These results demonstrate that the CSI-OPC device can improve the nonlinear tolerance of PDM-16QAM signals without an excess penalty.