Comparison of gain clamped and conventional semiconductor optical amplifiers for fast all-optical switching

Author

Vyrsokinos, Konstantinos ; Toptchiyski, Gueorgui ; Petermann, Klaus

Author_Institution

Photonics Commun. Res. Lab., Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece

Volume

20

Issue

10

fYear

2002

fDate

10/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1839

Lastpage

1846

Abstract

This paper reports computer simulation results to compare a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) when the two arms of it operate with gain-clamped and conventional semiconductor optical amplifiers (gcSOA and convSOA, respectively) for fast all-optical switching. The comparison is for demultiplexing optical pulses from 160 Gb/s to the base rate of 10 Gb/s or 40 Gb/s. The gain dynamics of the gcSOA is presented, the switching windows at the drop port of the MZI for both cases that were referred before and finally an evaluation of them is discussed.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; demultiplexing; optical communication equipment; semiconductor device models; semiconductor optical amplifiers; 10 to 40 Gbit/s; 160 Gbit/s; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; base rate; conventional semiconductor optical amplifiers; demultiplexing; drop port; fast all-optical switching; gain dynamics; gain-clamped semiconductor optical amplifiers; optical pulses; switching windows; Demultiplexing; Gratings; Nonlinear optics; Optical interferometry; Optical propagation; Optical pulses; Optical saturation; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission; Ultrafast optics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2002.804022

Filename

1159239