A novel self-synchronization scheme for optical packet-switched networks using semiconductor optical amplifier in symmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

Proposed in this paper is a novel packet-level self-synchronization scheme with Semiconductor optical amplifier based symmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI). The effect of cross-phase modulation (XPM) and cross-gain modulation (XGM) in SOA and the interfering characteristics of MZI are combined to make the proposal simple, fast and integrable, with no special treatment of the marker pulses. Through numerical analysis and properly design of the parameters, more than 20dB intensity contrast ratio of 100G/s RZ pseudorandom bit sequence can be achieved