Optical signal processing based on semiconductor optical amplifier and tunable delay interferometer

Abstract

In this paper, several applications in all-optical signal processing based on a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and variable delayed interferometers (DIs) have been experimentally demonstrated. Wavelength converter based on a nonlinear polarization switch (NPS) and a DI is proposed and presented for the wavelength conversion of nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) signals. An all-optical nonreturn-to-zero to return-to-zero (NRZ-to-RZ) format converter with tunable duty cycles is achieved by the DI with variable delays. The 40 Gb/s reconfigurable optical OR/NOR gate in a single SOA, followed a tunable optical bandpass filter (OBF) and a DI, optical 2R regeneration using an SOA-DI are investigated. It is found that this combinative realization of filters has been endowed with great flexibility and quality for 40 Gb/s optical logic and 2R regeneration.

Keywords

all-optical signal processing / semiconductor optical amplifier / delayed interferometer / wavelength conversion / format converter / 2R regeneration

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 60736036 and 61077055), the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (No. 2011CB301703), and the Foundation for the Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of Beijing (No. YB20091000301).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg