Title

All optical logic operations using semiconductor optical amplifier based devices

Date of Completion

January 2005

Keywords

Physics, Optics

Degree

Ph.D.

Abstract

High-speed optical processing technologies are essential for the construction of all-optical networks in the information era. In this Ph. D. thesis dissertation, essential mechanisms related to the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) based device such as the gain and phase dynamics when a short pulse in propagating inside SOA, and, all-optical Boolean function, XOR, AND and OR have been studied. ^ In order to realize the all-optical logic using SOA, the nonlinear gain and phase dynamics in SOA need to be studied first. The experimental results of 10--90% gain recovery curve have been presented. The recovery time is related to the carrier lifetime of the SOA and it varies with gain compression and bias current. For pulse width of a few picosecond, intraband effects need to be considered. In the SOA, phase change is also induced when a short pulse is propagating inside SOA. Unlike the conventional way of estimating the phase shift using alpha factor, the maximum phase shift is obtained first, then the effective alpha factor is calculated. ^ The experimental results of all optical Boolean function XOR and OR at 80 Gb/s are presented using SOA-MZI-DI and SOA-DI respectively. These are the highest operating speed that has been reported. The all optical AND operation at 40 Gb/s using SOA-MZI have also been reported here. The numerical simulation shows that the performance of these all-optical Boolean operations is limited by the carrier lifetime of the SOA. ^ The Boolean functions are the first step towards all optical circuits. The designs of a parity checker and a pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) generator are demonstrated. The error analysis using quality factor and eye-diagram is also presented. ^

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