Advantages of gain clamping in semiconductor amplifier crosspoint switches

Author

Williams, K.A. ; Penty, R.V. ; White, I.H. ; McAuley, D.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Eng., Cambridge Univ., UK

fYear

2002

fDate

17-22 Mar 2002

Firstpage

705

Lastpage

706

Abstract

This paper will demonstrate the substantial practical advantages of constructing crosspoint optical switches using gain clamped optical amplifiers. Using such switches, excellent dynamic range can be achieved even after the cascading of 10 switches. Comparisons of the relative merits of gain clamped and travelling wave amplifiers in concatenated cross-point and splitter based switch fabrics will be presented at the conference to identify gate tolerances and ultimate port counts for amplifier based switch fabrics.

Keywords

electro-optical switches; optical communication equipment; semiconductor optical amplifiers; wavelength division multiplexing; amplifier based switch fabrics; cross-point based switch fabrics; crosspoint optical switches; dynamic range; gain clamped optical amplifiers; gain clamping; gate tolerances; semiconductor amplifier crosspoint switches; splitter based switch fabrics; travelling wave amplifiers; ultimate port counts; Clamps; Communication switching; Dynamic range; Optical amplifiers; Optical distortion; Optical filters; Optical packet switching; Optical switches; Power amplifiers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibit, 2002. OFC 2002

Print_ISBN

1-55752-701-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/OFC.2002.1036662

Filename

1036662