Image Number 16 for United States Patent #6204944.
An all-optical time-division demultiplexing circuit is designed to output all the channels of time-division multiplexed signal pulses to different output ports simultaneously. A pulse stream of time-division multiplexed signal pulses and linearly chirped control pulses synchronized with the signal channels are input into an optical Kerr medium. The optical Kerr medium provides locally cross-phase modulation to the control pulse, depending on the presence or absence of the signal pulses of each signal channel. And the optical Kerr medium modulates the power of the component frequencies .upsilon..sub.1, .upsilon..sub.2, . . . , .upsilon..sub.N of the control pulses in accordance with each of the signal channel, by inducing the optical frequency shift to compensate the control pulse chirp on the optical frequency axis. The Kerr medium outputs a power modulated control light, which is separated in a wavelength-division demultiplexing circuit into component frequencies .upsilon..sub.1, .upsilon..sub.2, . . . , .upsilon..sub.N of the control pulses which are to output to respective ports of corresponding to individual signal channels.
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