Optical Packet Replicator Using Cascaded SOA-Based Active Fiber Ring

The optical packet replicator using a cascaded semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based active fiber ring is proposed. By introducing the noncircular assistant light into each stage and adopting a two-stage cascaded structure, 100 replications with identity amplitude are realized. Due to accumulation of amplified spontaneous emission noise, the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the 100th replication degrades 3.8 dB, which is equivalent to the SNR degradation of 19th replication in a single ring. The number of replications can be controlled by configuring driving pulses of SOA and each interval of hundreds of replications is equal accurately. It can be employed in ultraspeed sampling without any phase jitter.