All-optical switching and NOR functions based on two cascaded semiconductor optical amplifiers in a counter-propagating topology

Abstract

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the performances of two cascaded Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs) in a counter-propagating topology. This configuration accentuates the gain non-linearity due to the mutual modulation of the two SOAs. Experimental results are obtained by using two SOAs of 500 μm and 750 μm lengths. By using this configuration, we present the performances of two all-optical functions. Firstly we demonstrate experimentally the all-optical switching operation for 2.5 GHz data pulses. Secondly we show the principle and the experimental results of all-optical logic NOR gate. For these two functions, an extinction ratio higher than 12 dB can be obtained for a wide range of input data wavelength between 1490 nm and 1560 nm.