Simultaneous demonstration on all-optical digital encoder and comparator at 40 Gb/s with semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

We proposed and experimental demonstrated all-optical two line-four line encoder and two bit-wise comparator of RZ data streams at 40Gb/s based on cross gain modulation (XGM) and four wave mixing (FWM) in three parallel SOAs. Five logic functions for digital encoder and comparator between two signals A and B: AB, AB, AB, AB and AOmicronB, were achieved simultaneously. The first three optical logics are realized based on XGM in SOAs, the fourth is realized with FWM, and the fifth is the mixing result of the first and the fourth. A detuning filter is employed to improve the output performance. The output extinction ratio (ER) for the XGM operation is above 10dB, and the ER for FWM operation is around 8 dB. Wide and clear eye patterns for the five logic outputs can be observed.