Mitigation of pattern-induced degradation in SOA-based all-optical OTDM demultiplexers by using RZ-DPSK modulation format

In this letter, we propose and demonstrate to employ return-to-zero differential phase-shifted-keying (RZ-DPSK) modulation format in optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) systems so as to mitigate the pattern-induced degradation in semiconductor optical amplifier-based all-optical demultiplexers. Experimental results prove that RZDPSK can effectively alleviate such impairment with negligible induced power penalty, and thus, is more robust than the conventional RZ ON-OFF keying modulation format in OTDM systems.