Experimental reservoir computing using VCSEL polarization dynamics

Abstract

We realize an experimental setup of a time-delay reservoir using a VCSEL with optical feedback and optical injection. The VCSEL is operated in the injection-locking regime. This allows us to solve different information processing tasks, such as chaotic time-series prediction with a NMSE of 1.6×10^-2 and nonlinear channel equalization with a SER of 1.5×10^-2, improving state-of-the-art performance. We also demonstrate experimentally, through a careful statistical analysis, the impact of the VCSEL polarization dynamics on the performance of our architecture. More specifically, we confirm recent theoretical prediction stating that a polarization rotated feedback allows for the enhancement of the calculation performance compared to an isotropic feedback.