Performance of all optical wavelength conversion, logic operation and switching using semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

It is well known that semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) material is an ideal nonlinear material, which has not only a very high nonlinearity but also the signal gain. Using the gainsaturated SOA as a nonlinear interaction medium, all optical wavelength conversion at 20 Gb/s and all optical TDM demultiplexing at even higher bit rates have also been demonstrated. In this work we study the performance of using the SOA as an nonlinear interaction element for all optical wavelength conversion and switching/demultiplexing with a multiple of π phase-shift. We also demonstrate the idea of an all optical NOR (NAND for negative logic) gate based on a similar principle.