Novel scheme for ultrafast all-optical XOR operation

A novel scheme for all-optical exclusive-OR (XOR) operating at 160 Gb/s is proposed and analyzed by means of numerical simulations. It consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) where a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is placed in each of its arms. This SOA-MZI setup is coupled to a delay interferometer, which acts as a signal regenerator. It is shown that error-free operation can be achieved at a data rate of 160 Gb/s, indicating that the proposed scheme is not limited by the SOA recovery time.