All-Optical Three-Input “AND” Gate Dependent on a Differential Modulation Architecture

Abstract

This gazette focuses on simulation and experimental studies for all-optical three-input “AND” gate schemes. The proposed gate exploits the semiconductor optical amplifier Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (SOA-MZI) nonlinearities, particularly the cross-phase modulation (XPM) corollary in addition to the cross-gain modulation (XGM) corollary, which originates from a SOA-MZI differential modulation concept. Further, the system performance is analyzed and examined through actual and simulated results to evaluate the obtained “AND” gate signal. Dependent on the nonlinearity of SOAs, the all-optical “AND” gate can operate with three signals driven by a 2 picoseconds (ps) optical pulse source (OPS). We noticed that our experimental results are perfectly matched to the simulated results. The output “AND” signal is acquired at higher common harmonics up to 200 GHz in the simulation study and the optical “AND”, which can vastly be used in optical networking, is evaluated through many parameters, such as error vector magnitude (EVM), extinction ratio (ER), and gain. As a result, the pinnacle bit rate for the 16-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) and 256-QAM “AND” signal reaches 100 and 200 Gbit/s, respectively, at the 100 GHz common harmonic frequency.