2019 Women Institute of Technology Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WITCON ECE)

Design of Optical Integrated Circuit dedicated to

XOR/XNOR Gates
Vivek Kumar Srivastava Shashank Chauhan Simran Aneja
Department of Electrical and Department of Electrical and Department of Electrical and
Electronics & Communication Electronics & Communication Electronics & Communication
Engineering Engineering Engineering
DIT University DIT University DIT University
Dehradun, India Dehradun, India Dehradun, India
srivastava17vivek@gmail.com shashank.chauhan.0345@gmail.com simrananeja047@gmail.com

Amrindra Pal Sandeep Sharma

Department of Electrical and Centre for Reliability Sciences and
Electronics & Communication Technology, Department of Electronic
Engineering Engineering, Chang Gung University,
DIT University Taoyuan, Taiwan
Dehradun, India tek.learn@gmail.com
amrindra.pal123@gmail.com

Abstract— Optical logic circuits are making their position
stronger and stronger with the development in the optical
integrated circuits. Conventional digital logic gate integrated
circuits have been very useful components in the field of
electronics. Two input XOR and XNOR digital logic gates are
available as two separate integrated circuits (IC) 7486 and
74266 respectively. Here, an optical integrated circuit (OIC) is
presented as a single unit that can cater to the job of the XOR
as well as XNOR logic functions. The single OIC contains four
XOR gates that are designed using the electro-optical unit –
Mach-Zehnder Interferometer.
Keywords—XOR, XNOR, Optical Integrated Circuit, Mach-
Zehnder Interferometer
I. INTRODUCTION
With the increase in the usage of internet communication
among the people worldwide, the bandwidth requirement has
been increasing day by day. This has created tremendous
pressure on technology for enhancing the speed of
communication over the network [1]. Optical fiber
communication has been providing solutions to these
problems. It has certainly higher speeds as compared to the
conventional electronic circuits. In the early development
stages fiber communication was used only for transmission
and reception of signals in the optical form [2]. The signal
processing was still performed using the electronic circuits.
Every time the electric signal had to be converted to optical
signal for transmitting it through the optical fiber. Similarly,
optical to electrical signal upon reception. With the
development of optical integrated circuits (OIC), complete
optical processing systems have been possible [1] which are
much faster than the conventional electronic circuits.
Electro-optic effect based lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder
Interferometer (LNMZI) has been widely used in the
designing of several optical processing systems. It is
commonly used as a binary switch where it toggles the input
continuous wave (CW) optical signal at the two output ports
[3], [4]. The switching phenomenon has been utilized in
designing of several logic devices like logic gates, adders,
decoder, encoder [5], [6]. Principles of LNMZI are discussed
in Section II.
Here, in this paper an optical integrated circuit has been
proposed dedicated to XOR and XNOR logic functions [7]–
[9]. The single OIC contains four optical logic gates. Each
logic gate designed is able to deliver the two outputs for
XOR and XNOR logic function [10]. These optical gates are
made by combing different types of logic gates. XOR gates
and XNOR gates are used mainly to build circuits that
perform arithmetic and logic operations such as adder and
subtractor logic circuits. XOR/XNOR gates are essential
units of every error detecting circuit. In recent years, several
researchers have worked upon optical parity checking
systems using different optical techniques [7]-[9], [11]-[14]
This paper is organized as follows, Section II have
principle of operation of the proposed OIC. Section III
consists of Pin diagram and Pin description of XOR and
XNOR OIC. In Section IV layout of the XOR and XNOR
OIC is given. Section V describes the Opti-BPM result of the
circuit. Finally, Section VI conclude the proposed work.
II. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
A Mach-Zehnder Interferometer is a 2×2 electro-optical
switch designed using lithium niobate (LiNbO3) based
waveguides. One of the inputs is applied with 1 mW
continuous-wave optical signal that traverses the two linear
arm waveguides and suffers a phase shift depending upon the
electrical data signal applied at the second electrode
(Figure1). The final output optical signal appears at one of
the two output ports as guided in Table 1. The principle
behind the phase shift is the electro-optic (EO) effect also
known by the name of Pockels effect. The EO effect
introduces the change in the refractive index of a waveguide
when placed under the effect of an electric field. The shift in
the refractive index of LiNbO3 causes the phazse shift
between the optical signals passing through the two linear
waveguides.

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 2019 Women Institute of Technology Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WITCON ECE)
0 1 0 1
1 0 0 1
1 1 1 0

III. PIN DIAGRAM AND PIN DESCRIPTION

Figure 1: A single Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
Power at the output ports are expressed in normalized
form as:
Bar Port output:
Cross Port output:
, where represents the phase difference between the
input and the output port of the LNMZI.
Application of a high potential at the electrode E2 causes
a phase shift of π radians. On applying a low potential of 0
Volts, no phase shift occurs and the optical signal appears at
the cross port output terminal. The above two cases follow
equation 1 and 2.
TABLE 1: LNMZI SWITCHING OPERATION
The proposed OIC has been presented in figure 3
demonstrating the complete pin diagram. The 20 pin OIC
contains 4 separate 2-input logic gates. Each logic gate has
two logic inputs which are applied with electrical data
signals. The OIC has four optical inputs applied with four
separate CWs for each logic gate. It can be seen that every
logic gate has two complementary optical outputs, one as
(1)
XOR and the other as XNOR. In this way, a single OIC can
cater to eight logic functions simultaneously. The(2)
OIC can be
fabricated on a lithium niobate substrate.

Data Bit Potential

Bar Port Cross Port
Applied
1 (Logic High) 6.75 V 1 0 Figure 3: Pin Diagram of the proposed XOR/XNOR OIC
0 (Logic Low) 0V 0 1
The complete pin description of the OIC has been given
A schematic view of the LNMZI based XOR/XNOR in Table 3. It describes the different pin numbers which are
gate is shown in figure 2. The XOR/XNOR optical gate can applied with the different optical or electrical signals.
be designed by cascading to LNMZIs It takes the two data TABLE 3: PIN DESCRIPTION TABLE FOR THE XOR/XNOR OIC
inputs, A and B applied at the two LNMZIs in the form of
electrical signals. A CW is applied at the first input terminal Pin Number Description/signal
of the first LNMZI. The XOR logic output is produced at
the second output terminal while XNOR at the first output 1, 6, 15, 20 Continuous-wave optical signal (CW)
terminal in the form of optical signals. 2, 7, 13, 18 Data input 1 (A)

3, 8, 14, 19 Data input 2 (B)

4, 9, 12, 17 XNOR output (A B)

5, 10, 11, 16 XOR output (A B)

Figure 2: Schematic view of a 2-input XOR/XNOR electro-optical gate IV. DESIGN LAYOUT AND RESULTS
The two LNMZIs propagate the CW optical signal The schematic layout diagram of the XOR/XNOR OIC
according to the combination of the input data signals A and has been shown in figure 4. The structure consists of the
B. four XOR and XNOR optical logic gates that are designed
The normalized power at the XOR output terminal can using the XOR/XNOR optical logic gate as illustrated in
be given as: Section II. The OIC contains eight LNMZIs in total, labeled
as . A 1 mW CW optical signal (1.3 µm) is applied at the
first input port of the LNMZIs , , , (3) and i.e. pin
number 1,6,15 and 20. As can be seen in figure 4, the four
Similarly, at the XNOR
XOR terminal the obtained
outputs are output power
at thecan
pinbenumbers
given as:5, 10, 11 and
16 whereas XNOR outputs at the pin numbers 4, 9, 12 and
(4) 17.
The above equations 3 and 4 follow the truth table
presented in Table 2.

TABLE 2: TRUTH TABLE OF XOR AND XNOR LOGIC FUNCTIONS

INPUTS
XNOR XOR
A B
0 0 1 0

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 2019 Women Institute of Technology Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WITCON ECE)
In this case control signal , so incoming optical
signal is obtained at first output port of the MZI . This
port is connected to the second input port of MZI .
Control signal , so optical signal has emerged at first
output port of MZI i.e. XNOR = 1 and XOR = 0 (shown
in figure 5).

Figure 4: Schematic Layout of the XOR/XNOR OIC

Using the normalized power output equations 3 and 4 the

XOR/XNOR output equations are presented here.
Normalized powers at the XOR output terminals:
Figure 5: BPM simulation result of XOR and XNOR for
(5)
Case 2:
(6)
In this case control signal , so incoming optical signal
(7) is obtained at first output port of the MZI . This port is
connected to the second input port of MZI X2. Control
(8) signal , so optical signal has emerged out at the
second output port of MZI i.e. XNOR = 0 and XOR = 1
Normalized powers at the XNOR output terminals: (shown in figure 6).

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

, where Δ is the phase difference between the input and the Figure 6: BPM simulation result of XOR and XNOR for

output port of the corresponding LNMZIs. The proposed Case 3:

device can be fabricated on a Z-cut crystal, LiNbO3
substrate (RI = 2.23) with Ti: LiNbO3 waveguides. The In this case control signal , so incoming optical signal
complete design parameters can be found in [9]. is obtained at second output port of the MZI . This port is
connected to the first input port of MZI X2. Control
V. OPTI BPM RESULTS
signal , so optical signal has emerged at first output
The designed structure was simulated on the software Opti port of MZI i.e. XNOR = 1 and XOR = 0 (shown in
BPM 12.1, and the corresponding results are presented in figure 7).
Figure 5. The results illustrate the four cases discussed in
Table 2. The outputs are obtained as optical signals.
Presence of an optical signal is considered as a logic high
result, while no optical signal at the output signifies a logic
zero output. Here, in all the cases each optical gate has been
applied with the same input combinations. It can be a case
that the different gates can be applied with different input
combinations simultaneously.

The proposed optical integrated circuit has four XOR and

XNOR gates. Out of these 4, case study for one XOR and Figure 7: BPM simulation result of XOR and XNOR for
XNOR gates is given below:
Case 4:
Case 1:
In this case control signal , so incoming optical
signal is obtained at second output port of the MZI . This

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 2019 Women Institute of Technology Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (WITCON ECE)
port is connected to the first input port of MZI . Control handle large data as compare to conventional integrated
signal , so optical signal has emerged at second circuits. The results presented in the paper justify the
output port of MZI i.e. XNOR = 1 and XOR = 0 (shown successful design of the above-mentioned circuit using
electro-optic effect in LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
in figure 8). in BPM along with mathematical description. Performance
parameters like extinction ratio, contrast ratio, insertion loss,
and amplitude modulation are also calculated based on the
simulation results.
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In this paper, XOR and XNOR optical integrated circuit "Design of incrementer and decrementer device for optical
based on LNMZI has been proposed. The OIC has ability to computing", Proc. SPIE 11364, Integrated Photonics Platforms:
Fundamental Research, Manufacturing and Applications,
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The single OIC contains four set of XOR and XNOR gates.
The OIC can work at very fast speed and has the ability to

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