Research On High-Speed All-Optical Signal Processing Based On Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

All-optical signal processing (AOSP) is an essential issue for high-speed next generation optical networks. In the last few years, many AOSP techniques have been proposed using nonlinear effects in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) because of small footprint, low power consumption and ease of optical integration. In this thesis, some of AOSP technologies, which are based on SOAs, have been researched and demonstrated.An optical multicast shceme and an optical serial-to-parallel scheme have been proposed which using the interaction of cross-gain modulation (XGM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) in a SOA. To fulfill the proposed schemes, an optical short pulse source and a time- and wavelength-interleaved pulse source have been finished. Using the multi-wavelength pulse source, the optical multicast (10 Gbit/s?4×10 Gbit/s) has been realized experimentally. Using the time- and wavelength-interleaved pulse source, the optical serial-to-parallel operation (40 Gbit/s?4×10 Gbit/s) has been accomplished in experiment. Both of the experiments'results show that the output signals of the two proposed schemes have better OSNR than the degraded input signals.A novel wavelength conversion scheme, named"2-to-2 WC"is proposed at the first time. The scheme, which is based on four-wave micing (FWM) in a SOA and without using any external probes, can simultaneously convert 2 input signals into 2 ouput signals with diffirent wavelengths. We use a LiNbO3 M-Z amplitude modulator to obtain input signals suited for the scheme. In experiment, a SOA-based 10 Gbit/s"2-to-2"WC is accomplished.Based on various nonlinearities in single SOA, we propose a reconfigurable optical logic scheme. The scheme can performs NOT, NOR,"A? B", AND, XNOR functions using a SOA and an optical bandpass filter. The extinction ratio and OSNR of the output signals in various logic gates have been experimentally investigated.Using two SOAs, we design a complex optical logic scheme which can realize both optical half-adder and optical half-subtracter. The operating principle of the proposed scheme has been discussed and the performances of the scheme have been investigated in 10 Gbit/s experiment.