An all optical method of implementing a wavelength encoded simultaneous binary full adder-full subtractor unit exploiting nonlinear polarization rotation in semiconductor optical amplifier

Full adders and full subtractors are the basic circuit elements of any digital data processor in electronics as well as in the all optical domain. Again the wavelength dependent encoding/decoding techniques have established itself as a very promising and efficient tool having some inherent and unique advantages relative to the other well known intensity or polarization or phase dependent optical data encoding mechanisms:In this communication, the authors therefore propose a new scheme of implementing a wavelength encoded complete binary full adder-full subtractor unit in the all optical domain using the wavelength conversion by the nonlinear polarization rotation in a single semiconductor optical amplifier. The interacting signals are counter propagating in the semiconductor optical amplifier and hence can be set at the same wavelength. To realize the binary logic wavelength dependent encoding/decoding mechanism is exploited in our proposed scheme of full adder-full subtractor unit. Also the optical add/drop multiplexing employing the special filtering property of the semiconductor optical amplifier is utilized for the designing of the all optical system. (C) 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.