BER performance analysis of 100 and 200 Gbit∕s all-optical OTDM node using symmetric Mach–Zehnder switches

Abstract

In future high-speed self-routing photonic networks based on all-optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) it is highly desirable to carry out packet switching, clock recovery and demultiplexing in the optical domain in order to avoid the bottleneck owing to the optoelectronics conversion. We propose a self-routing OTDM node structure composed of an all-optical router and a demultiplexer based on the symmetric Mach–Zehnder (SMZ) for high bit rate OTDM packets. Here, we investigate both numerically and by means of simulation the noise and crosstalk characteristics of the SMZ and the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed OTDM node. For BER of 10−9 and the total bit rates of 100 and 200 Gbit/s the power penalty incurred is about 2 and 2.5 dB, respectively compared with a 2.5 Gbit/s back-to-back (B-B) system.