I.D. Phillips

80 Gbit/s optical clock recovery using an electrical phase locked loop, and commercially available components

Polarisation and wavelength insensitive 80 Gbit/s optical clock recovery using an electrical phase locked loop entirely comprising commercially available components is demonstrated. The system exhibited excellent long-term stability, with a timing jitter of /spl sim/250 fs.

Ultra fast optical processing for network applications

We review progress of technologies and systems for ultra high speed optical networks based on ultra high speed optical processing in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Wavelength conversion and regenerative wavelength conversion are discussed. The results illustrate the potential for both wavelength conversion and high speed signal regeneration to be carried out in the optical domain, using technologies suited to volume manufacture. The use of these technologies in combination with WDM should have a significant impact on the number of regenerators required to form a realistic all optical network layer.

Recent advances in ultrafast all-optical signal processing

We review recent advances in high-speed all-optical signal processing using semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). These act as non-linear elements in interferometric structures that form switching gates for high speed optical pulse trains. A model of the carrier dynamics in the SOA is used to explain how repetitive switching at rates much greater than the SOA gain recovery rate is possible. We describe recent experiments in which SOA based switches are placed in novel all-optical architectures to give all-optical shift register and memory functionality, and explain the results using the model.