Performance analysis of ultrafast all-optical Boolean XOR gate using semiconductor optical amplifier-based Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

An all-optical Boolean XOR gate implemented with a SOA-based Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (SOA-MZI) is numerically simulated at 10 and 40 Gb/s to extract simple design rules. If the control and clock energies are property selected so that the SOAs are heavily saturated and at the same time the switched-out pulses are not distorted, the metrics that define the quality of switching can be optimized for high gate performance at 10 Gb/s. However, the operation at 40 Gb/s is limited by the SOAs gain recovery time that results in strong pattern dependence of the output pulses and so the extension to this rate requires the deployment of gain recovery reduction techniques in bulk and quantum-well SOAs or alternatively the exploitation of other technologically advanced optical devices, such as quantum-dot SOAs. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.