SOA-based Gates Research Articles

Pattern compensation in SOA-based gates

We propose a novel scheme employing complementary data inputs to overcome the patterning normally associated with semiconductor optical amplifier based gates and demonstrate the scheme experimentally at 42.6Gb/s. The scheme not only avoids introducing patterning during switching, but also compensates for much of the patterning present on the input data. A novel gate was developed for the experiment to provide the complementary signals required for the scheme.

Cascadability Properties of Optical 3R Regenerators Based on SOAs

This paper assesses the regenerative properties of nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based optical regenerators cascaded in high-speed transmission networks. It is shown that the fundamental condition that must be ensured to maintain optimum and constant regenerative properties along a chain of concatenated nonlinear optical regenerators is that the extinction ratio at the input of each regenerator is kept constant. This condition determines an important requirement on the regenerator; signal reshaping and noise suppression must take place while performing the necessary extinction ratio enhancement to maintain cascadability. Starting from the SOA nonlinear transfer function, we derive the relationship between the extinction ratio enhancement and the noise suppression for different SOA-based gate configurations and assess their cascadability properties. This analysis is supported by experimental results of transmission with cascaded optical regeneration in a reconfigurable transmission network over transoceanic distances on standard fiber.

Frequency-dependent electric dc power consumption model including quantum-conversion efficiencies in ultrafast all-optical semiconductor gates around 160 Gb/s

Based on nine up-to-date types of semiconductor-optical-amplifier (SOA) samples, we devised a power-consumption model of SOA-based all-optical gates as a tool to develop faster and more efficient OTDM systems for bitrates from 10 to 160 Gb/s and those over 160 Gb/s. The conventional effect of a continuous wave (cw) holding beam was included in the model. Furthermore, in this work we defined three step-wise quantum conversion efficiencies eta(1), eta(2), and eta(3) from current-injected carriers through photons. The dependence of each of the three efficiencies on the SOA-structure was studied. The total efficiency eta(T) observed for the nine SOAs ranged widely from 0.07 to 0.46. The validity of the power-consumption model was verified by systematically measuring the effective carrier recovery rate. According to our model, the power consumption of the best existing SOA-based gate for 160-Gb/s signals is 750 mW, and this increases at a rate approximately proportional to (bitrate)(2), and decreases proportionally to (1/etaT)(2).