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Performance Analysis on Semiconductor Laser Amplifier Loop Mirrors

Hanxing Shi, Member, IEEE
AbstractOperating characteristics of the semiconductor laser amplifier loop mirror (SLALOM) in optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) applications are investigated in theory. The injection current of the semiconductor laser amplifier (SLA) should be adjusted to realize a flat and high switching window. The channel crosstalk induced by the finite carrier lifetime and the signal timing jitter should be balanced. The optimal switching window width should be slightly wider than half of the OTDM signal bit interval. The control pulse should be narrower than one-third of the OTDM bit interval in order not to deteriorate the bit error rate (BER) performance. Further discussion indicates that the nonlinear gain compression in the SLA becomes a crucial limit for the SLA-based all-optical switches to be used in the terahertz applications. Index TermsDemultiplexing, fiber optical communications, nonlinear gain compression, semiconductor laser amplifier (SLA).

I. INTRODUCTION LL-OPTICAL switching is essential for high-speed optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) systems and networks. A semiconductor laser amplifier loop mirror (SLALOM) based on the optical nonlinearity of a semiconductor laser amplifier (SLA), which is also called the terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (TOAD), is one of the most promising candidates [1][4]. With an interferometric construction, it is based on a nonlinear phase shift induced by a change in carrier density in the SLA, but the switching speed is not restricted by the carrier recovery rate. The other fiber-based optical switches, such as soliton gates [5] and nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) [6], [7], require at least tens of meters of fiber, high control pulse energy, and strict wavelength matching between signal and control pulses. They are also sensitive to both polarization and environment. Electroabsorption modulator (EAM) switches, as electrically controlled switching, are also widely studied [8], [9]. However, they induce large optical loss and need the device to have a steep nonlinear absorption curve to realize a picosecond switching window. SLA-based all-optical switches offer the advantages of signal amplification, wavelength flexibility, low control pulse energy, and large dynamic range. They can also be polarization insensitive. Based on a similar mechanism as the SLALOM, other interferometric arrangements, such as MachZehnder interferomManuscript received December 4, 2000; revised August 15, 2001. This work was supported in part by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications through National 863 Project. The author was with the Department of ECE, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA. She is now with Yotta Networks, Inc., Plano, TX 75074 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 0733-8724(02)03335-2.

eters (MZIs) or Michelson interferometers (MIs), provide additional flexibility and monolithic integration for stable operation [10][12]. So far, 250-Gb/s demultiplexing has been demonstrated with a SLALOM having 4-ps switching window [2]. Therefore, SLA-based all-optical switches have a bright perspective in practical applications. Although SLA switches have been extensively studied in experiments, their operating performances have not been thoroughly investigated in theory. The switching characteristics, which are governed by many factors, such as SLAs position in the loop, SLAs gain dynamics, and shape and power of the control pulse, make the analysis complex. In [13], Zhou et al. analyzed the degradation of the signal quality induced by the uneven optical coupler and the spontaneous emission in the SLA, but they ignored several crucial issues related to the light pulses and the switch window configuration. In this paper, we will investigate these issues from the point of view of the system performance, especially the configurations of the SLA, the effect of the inevitable timing jitter in the received signal pulses, the optimization of the switching window width, and the requirement on control pulsewidth. In addition, Tang et al. proposed, in theory, that if a picosecond control pulse is used, a fast gain depletion process will appear in the dynamics of SLA and further distort the switching window [14]. However, how greatly does the distorted switching window affect the demultiplexing performance? In this paper, we will investigate the influence of fast gain depletion on the bit error rate (BER) performance of the demultiplexed signal and confirm the upper limitation to the operating speed of SLA switches. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the operating principle of the SLALOM and estasblishes the theoretical model. In Section III, the demultiplexing performance of the SLALOM is systematically analyzed, especially focusing on four issues: 1) the design of the SLA; 2) the influence of the signal timing jitter; 3) the optimization of the switching window width; and 4) the limitation to the control pulsewidth. In Section IV, the influence of nonlinear gain compression on the BER performance and the induced speed limitation of SLA switches are analyzed. II. THEORETICAL MODEL Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of the SLALOM device with the Sagnac interferometric configuration [1]. An SLA is located asymmetrically inside the fiber loop as the (where nonlinear medium. Its offset distance is the velocity of light in the fiber) from the loop midpoint

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According to the Sagnac interferometric configuration, the optical power of the demultiplexed signal output from port B of the SLALOM is [13]

(2) is the optical power of the received OTDM signal, where is the splitting ratio of the fiber coupler, and are the dynamic gain experienced in the clockwise and counterclockis their gain wise signal pulses, respectively, is the phase differratio, and ence between the two signal pulses. When no control pulse exand , no signal is ists in a symmetric loop, i.e., , transmitted out from port B. On the other hand, when the power of the signal pulse emitted from port B can be maximized. In practical OTDM applications, both timing jitter and temporal deviation between signal and control pulses inevitably exist, especially after long-distance transmission. At the receiving port, they will be converted into intensity fluctuations of the demultiplexed signal and deteriorate the system performance [15]. In a previous work [16], we have established a comprehensive theoretical model for the timing jitter of signal pulses in all-optical demultiplexers and analyzed its influence on fiber-based Sagnac interferometric switches, i.e., NOLMs. In this paper, the same timing jitter model, in conjunction with a conventional optically preamplified receiver model [17], is adopted to numerically analyze the SLALOMs demultiplexing performance. It is assumed that the temporal relationship between signal and control pulses satisfies a Gaussian probability distribution as follows [16]: (3) where is the shift of the received signal pulse corresponding to the control pulse, the mean is the synchronization deviation is the root mean square (rms) of the of signal pulses, and timing jitter of signal pulses. In addition to the general noise terms in the optical receiver [17], the additional noise induced by the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in the SLA should also be considered. In general, the equivalent photocurrent of ASE power in the SLA is expressed as [18] (4) is the spontaneous emission factor, is the electronic where is the bandwidth of the optical filter. Thus, the charge, and additional noise terms induced by the SLA are mainly the ASE shot noise and the signal-spontaneous beat noise [18] (5) (6)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the SLALOM device. PC: polarization controller. EDFA: Erbium-doped fiber amplifier. DSF: dispersion-shifted fiber.

approximately determines the switching window width of the SLALOM. The received OTDM signal with a multiplexing (where is the channel number bit rate of is the single-channel bit rate) of the OTDM system and is launched into port A and split into two counterpropagating signals with equal amplitudes and identical phases. The optical power of the OTDM signal is chosen small enough that it does not significantly affect the dynamics of the SLA. On the other hand, intense control pulses with single-channel repetition are transmitted into the fiber loop via a wavelength rate division multiplexing (WDM) coupler in order to change the dynamics of SLA. In the absence of this control pulse, the whole configuration operates as a symmetric loop and the recombined signal after the loop is completely reflected back from the port A. However, things will be physically different when the refractive index in the SLA is greatly changed by the existence of strong control pulse. Due to SLAs offset from the loop midpoint, the two counterpropagating signals will arrive at the SLA with predicted time delay in order to experience the different dynamic states of the SLA. As a result, the two signals will experience different gains and different phase shifts. After they are recombined through the coupler, the corresponding target channel will be transmitted out from port B of the loop, channels will be reflected back from port and the other A. The dynamic response of SLA taking into account the intraband effects can be described as [14] (1a) (1b) (1c) and are the optical power and the phase of where is the SLAs dynamic gain, the input light, respectively, is the small signal gain, is the mode is confinement factor, is the differential gain coefficient, the transparent carrier density, is the transparent injection curis the saturation energy, is the spontaneous carrier rent, is the internal loss, is the linewidth enhancement lifetime, factor, and is the nonlinear gain compression factor, which is mainly related to intraband processes, such as carrier heating, spectral hole burning, and two-photon absorption.

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TABLE I COMMON PARAMETER VALUES USED THE CALCULATIONS

IN

TABLE II DIFFERENT PARAMETER VALUES FOR DIFFERENT BIT RATE SYSTEMS

where is the conversion efficiency of the optical receiver, is its electrical bandwidth, and is the equivalent photocurrent of the amplifier input power. Considering all of the noise terms, the BER of the demultiplexed signal is given by [17]

Fig. 2. Dependence of the normalized demultipelxed signal power P =(P G ) on the gain ratio of two signal branches R, splitting ratio of fiber coupler , and SOA linewidth enhancement factor .

BER

erfc

(7)

is the error function, and are where erfc the average optical powers of 1 and 0 code of the demultiand plexed signal in the whole frame, respectively, and are their intensity noises, respectively. In the next section, we study the case of a 10 10 Gb/s OTDM system to investigate SLALOMs demultiplexing performance. For comparison, we also cite the performance of 4 10, 16 10, and 4 40 Gb/s systems. The default parameters used in the calculations are summarized in Tables I and II. The reader is referred to [16] for the parameters of the optical receiver. III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS In this section, we investigate the performance of the SLALOM for applications slower than 200 Gb/s. Considering that intraband processes become noticeable for control pulses narrower than 1 ps only [14], nonlinear gain compression is temporarily neglected in this section and will not affect the conclusions. A. SLA Configurations It is clear, from (2), that both the power and shape of the demultiplexed signal pulses depend on the gain ratio of the two

counterpropagating signals through the SLA. Therefore, optimizing the SLAs parameters is the first step to obtain the best demultiplexing performance. Fig. 2 illustrates the dependence of the normalized demultiplexed signal power on the gain ratio of two counterpropagating signals, splitting ratio of the fiber coupler and the SLAs linewidth enhancement factor . As a Sagnac interferometer, the symmetry of the optical coupler is a requisite to avoid the intrinsic crosstalk [15]. For simplification, an ideal 1:1 optical coupler is assumed in the following. It is also shown, in Fig. 2, that the normalized demultiplexed signal can be maximized with the gain ratio between 0.2 and 0.4. However, the optimal value of varies with the linewidth enhancement factor . An SLA with a larger requires a larger gain ratio but also produces a higher normalized output power. Therefore, an SLA with high linewidth enhancement factor can improve the demultiplexing performance, which was experimentally verified by Manning [19]. and Fig. 3 shows the dynamic gains of two signal pulses, , and the corresponding switching window of a SLALOM under different injection current in the 10 10 Gb/s OTDM system. The width of the switching window is approximately equal to the time difference when the two counterpropagating signal pulses separately arrive at the SLA, which is twice the temporal offset of SLA from the fiber loop center [1]. The lower subfigure indicates that there is an optimal injection current to realize a high and flat switching window. Insufficient injection current reduces the signal gain and further degrades the switching window amplitude. Conversely, an overbiased SLA will generate a gain ratio and a phase difference greater than the optimal values, which results in a dented switching window.

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Fig. 4. Power penalty induced by signal timing jitter and temporal deviation between signal and control pulses in a 10 10 Gb/s situation.

Fig. 3. Dynamic gains obtained by two signal branches (upper) and the corresponding switch window of SLALOMs (lower) in a 4 10 Gb/s system.

Therefore, the injection current of the SLA must be specifically adjusted according to the control pulse power. B. Optimizations of Switching Window Width and Temporal Parameters of Signal Pulses The switching window width of the SLALOM is determined by the position deviation of the SLA in the fiber loop. As shown in Fig. 3, there is a switching floor outside the main switching window, which means that even for the nontarget channels, signal leakage from port B is still inevitable. It originates from the finite carrier lifetime in the SLA, which results in finite recovery time of the dynamic gain and, finally, produces a gain discrepancy between the two signal pulses outside the main window. This is the main contribution to the channel crosstalk in SLALOM operation. Widening the switching window can increase the gain difference outside the switching window and aggravate the channel crosstalk. However, in practice, the narrowest switching window does not correspond to the best system performance. If the switching window is too narrow, the unavoidable timing jitter in the received signal will be transformed into intensity noise in the demultiplexed signal and increase the bit error rate. Hence, to trade off the effects of the channel crosstalk and the signal timing jitter, the switching window width of the SLALOM has to be optimized to realize the best demultiplexing performance. Besides the timing jitter, any deviation of the target signal pulses from the window center will also increase the error rate. Therefore, both the signal timing jitter and temporal deviation between signal and control pulses should be controlled. and Fig. 4 shows the power penalty induced by both under different switching window widths in a 10 10 Gb/s situation. The power penalty is defined as the excess signal power required for the 10 BER value in comparison to the ideal case having zero and optimized value of . The reference values of the signal power received by the receiver are, re, , spectively, 1.4 dBm, 2.9 dBm, and 2.7 dBm for and ps. It is clear that the optimal temporal deviation should be slightly beyond half of the switching window width , which

means that the target signal pulse should be positioned around the switching window center. The requirement of the small deis because that the finite control pulsewidth viation beyond retards the switching window. Any small departure from this optimum will seriously deteriorate the demultiplexing performance. Under the fixed , the timing jitter of the signal pulse will increase the power penalty, especially if the signal pulse deviates from the switching window center. In addition, the wider switching window can tolerate larger signal timing jitter for the same power penalty. Comparing the received signal powers in the three cases, we also find that there is an optimal switching window width corresponding to the minimal signal power. Considering all of these phenomena, Fig. 5 shows the dependence of demultiplexing performance on the switching window width and the pulse timing jitter for different bitrate cases. The received signal powers are, respectively, 5.8, 2.9, 1.0, and 5.0 dBm for the 4 10, 10 10, 16 10, and 4 40 Gb/s systems. In Fig. 5(b), the horizontal axis corresponds to normalin order ized to the signal pulse interval to compare the different bit-rate cases. The temporal deviation between signal and control pulses are set as optimum, according to this analysis. Under fixed timing jitter, there is an optimal switching window width, which is a little bit wider than half of the OTDM bit interval . This phenomenon was experimentally observed as the existence of an optimal switching contrast while varying the switching window width [11]. In the 10 10 Gb/s case, the optimal value of is about 6 ps when ps. With a worse timing jitter, a wider switching window is required to tolerate the timing jitter and to obtain the optimal BER performance. Besides, at higher speed, the SLALOM is more sensitive to the signal timing jitter, which asks for stricter requirement to the optimization of the switching window width. Further comparing the curves of 16 10 and 4 40 Gb/s cases, it is interesting to see that, in the system with fewer , the channels, i.e., relatively higher single-channel bit rate demultiplexing performance is more sensitive to the widening . This is because, for of the switching window above , there is less time for the SLA to recover its dynamic higher gain between two successive control pulses in order to generate worse crosstalk from the nontarget channels. Also, the system

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Fig. 6. Dependence of demultiplexing performance on normalized control pulsewidth t in different OTDM cases.

C. Limitation on Control Pulsewidth As shown previously, the temporal deviation of the SLA , determines the switching from the fiber loop center, i.e., window width. In addition, the form of the control pulse is also important for determining the shape, especially the edges, of the window. A narrower control pulse can generate a flatter switching window, which has better tolerance for signal timing jitter. A narrower pulse can also achieve sharper edges of the switching window, which reduces the crosstalk from the neighboring channels. Fig. 6 shows the dependence of the BER performance on under different OTDM the normalized control pulsewidth bit rates. The horizontal axis is the ratio of the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the control pulse to the signal pulse interval . Because the dynamic gain of the SLA is involved with the total optical energy, the control pulse energy is fixed for different cases. The optimal switching windows are set as 13, 6, 4, and 4 ps for the 4 10, 10 10, 16 10, and 4 40 Gb/s systems, respectively. The received signal powers are the same as in Section III-B. It is shown that there is some limit on the control pulsewidth to guarantee the specified demultiplexing performance. The upper limit of in the scale of 10 BER value is about 1/3 of the single-channel bit interval. For example, in a 10 10 Gb/s system, the control pulse should be narrower than 3 ps to obtain . BER IV. LIMITATION OF NONLINEAR GAIN COMPRESSION In the previous section, we only discussed the OTDM systems slower than 200 Gb/s. In terahertz OTDM applications, there are mainly three factors limiting the resolution of the SLA switches: 1) the length of the device; 2) the control pulsewidth; and 3) the intraband processes. The finite length of the SLA decides the propagation time of the pulses and further induces an asymmetric switching window [3], [20]. Furthermore, the width of the switching window cannot be narrower than the control pulsewidth [21]. These limitations could be weakened by using a shorter device and a narrower control pulse. However, with a picosecond control pulse in a terahertz system, the intraband

Fig. 5. BER performance of demultiplexed signal versus switch window width T under different signal timing jitters  . (a) 10 10 Gb/s; (b) 4 10, 16 10, and 4 40 Gb/s.

with a higher single-channel bit rate requires higher optical power of the received signal for the same BER value. Therefore, in order to realize the specified OTDM speed, it is beneficial to adopt a combination of a higher channel number and a slower single-channel bit rate. Fig. 5(a) also shows that in the 10 10 Gb/s system, the ps in the range of jitter tolerance of a SLALOM with 10 BER is about 1.5 ps. Compared with a NOLM having the same interferometric configuration [16], the SLALOM has a relatively higher tolerance for timing jitter. In a fiber-based NOLM switch, the switching window shape is determined by the integral effect of the walkoff between signal and control pulses along a few kilometers of fiber [6]. At any moment, the instantaneous window of the nonlinear interaction has the same shape as the control pulse and is very sensitive to the pulse timing jitter. All of the fiber-nonlinearity-based switches require this strict synchronization. However, the optical nonlinearity of a SLALOM is concentrated in the SLA element and the switching window does not change with time. Therefore, SLA-based switches are inherently less sensitive to the signal timing jitter, which was proved experimentally by Sokoloff [3]. It is undoubtedly one of the critical benefits in practical applications.

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Fig. 7. Dynamic gain of SLA and the corresponding switch window shape of SLALOM with " 0:2 in a 40 10 Gb/s OTDM situation.

Fig. 9. BER performance versus received signal power in the same 40 10 Gb/s situation with and without consideration of nonlinear gain compression, in which t = 0:6 ps.

Fig. 8. BER performance versus control pulsewidth in the 40 10 Gb/s OTDM system with and without consideration of nonlinear gain compression.

that the combination of intraband processes and signal timing jitter can destroy the BER performance. If the signal timing jitter is negligible, the distorted switching window can only enhance the channel crosstalk to a certain extent, which is shown as a small power penalty. However, in practice, because of the inevitable signal timing jitter, the secondary window will seriously deteriorate the BER performance and finally boost up the error floor. Therefore, nonlinear gain compression must be considered for SLA-based all-optical switches in terahertz OTDM applications. Furthermore, it brings about much stricter limit on timing jitter of the pulses, which corresponds to stricter requirements on the system designs. That is one of the main reasons why the narrowest switching window reported with a SLALOM was just 4 ps, until now [2]. Even though a subpicosecond switching window has been realized with a MachZehnder structure [22], no reports of acceptable BER performance have been published. V. CONCLUSION In this paper, we comprehensively analyze the demultiplexing performance of the SLALOM device in OTDM systems. Above all, the SLA is the key element for guaranteeing the switching performance. An SLA with higher linewidth enhancement factor is beneficial to get higher output power. The injection current of the SLA should be specifically adjusted to obtain a flat and high switching window. There is a compromise in switching window width between the channel crosstalk induced by the finite carrier lifetime and the inevitable timing jitter in the received signal pulses. The optimal switching window width should be slightly wider than half of the pulse interval of the OTDM signal. The upper limit of the control pulsewidth is about 1/3 of the OTDM bit interval in order not to restrict the BER performance. In a practical design, it is suggested to adopt the combination of higher channel number and lower single channel bitrate, which has better tolerance to the timing jitter of the signal pulses. All of these conclusions can be extended to various SLAbased interferometric switches and are instructive for subterahertz OTDM system design. Furthermore, compared with fiber-

processes lead to nonlinear gain compression in SLA, which is no longer negligible. This section discusses this issue with an example of 40 10 Gb/s system. The related parameters are that the signal ps, ps, and the received pulsewidth is 0.6 ps, signal power is 2.9 dBm. Fig. 7 shows the dynamic gain of SLA and the shape of the switching window under different control . There pulsewidths under gain compression factor of is apparently a gain depletion process right after the input of the 0.6-ps control pulse. The shape of the switching window is correspondingly distorted, with a big cusp in the primary window and a small secondary window afterwards. Fig. 8 shows the effect of the intraband processes on the BER performance of the demultiplexed signal in the same system. Neglecting the intraband processes, the narrower control pulse results in the better BER performance. However, due to the existence of the intraband processes, the over narrow control pulse could deteriorate the BER performance, especially when considering the signal timing jitter. Fig. 9 shows the BER value versus the signal power detected by the receiver under different values of compression factor and signal timing jitter. The control pulsewidth is 0.6 ps. It confirms

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based switches, the SLA-based switches are inherently insensitive to the signal timing jitter, which is a merit in practical applications. For terahertz OTDM applications, the nonlinear gain compression originating from carrier heating and spectral hole burning cannot be ignored. The interaction between the distorted switching window induced by the intraband processes and the signal timing jitter will seriously raise the error floor and, in the worse case, will prevent the demultiplexed signal from being readable. Therefore, SLA-based all-optical switches cannot be used in terahertz OTDM applications. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to thank D. Cohen and P. Royo at Univerity of CaliforniaSanta Barbara for fruitful discussions and Prof. J. Lin at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. REFERENCES
[1] J. P. Sokoloff, P. R. Prucnal, I. Glesk, and M. Kane, A Terahertz Optical Asymmetric Demultiplexer (TOAD), IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 15, pp. 787790, July 1993. [2] I. Glesk, J. P. Sokoloff, and P. R. Prucnal, Demonstration of all-optical demultiplexing of TDM data at 250 Gbit/s, Electron. Lett., vol. 30, pp. 339340, Feb. 1994. [3] J. P. Sokoloff, I. Glesk, P. R. Prucnal, and P. K. Boncek, Performance of a 50 Gbit/s optical time domain multiplexed system using a Terahertz Optical Asymmetric Demultiplexer, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 98100, Jan. 1994. [4] K. Suzuki, K. Iwatsuki, S. Nishi, and M. Saruwatari, Error-free demultiplexing of 160 Gbit/s pulse signal using optical loop mirror including semiconductor laser amplifier, Electron. Lett., vol. 30, pp. 15011503, Sept. 1994. [5] K. H. Ahn, M. Vaziri, B. C. Barnett, G. R. Williams, X. D. Cao, M. N. Islam, B. Malo, K. O. Hill, and D. Q. Chowdhury, Experimental demonstration of a low-latency fiber soliton logic gate, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 14, pp. 17681775, Aug. 1996. [6] N. J. Doran and D. Wood, Nonlinear-optical loop mirror, Opt. Lett., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 5658, 1988. [7] M. Nakazawa, E. Yoshida, T. Yamamoto, E. Yamada, and A. Sahara, TDM single channel 640 Gbit/s transmission experiment over 60 km using a 400 fs pulse train and a walk-off free, dispersion-flattened nonlinear optical loop mirror, Electron. Lett., vol. 34, pp. 907908, Apr. 1998. [8] S. B. Alleston, P. Harper, I. S. Penketh, I. Bennion, and N. J. Doran, 1220 km propagation of 40 Gbit/s single channel RZ data over dispersion managed standard (nondispersion shifted) fiber, in Proc. OFC/IOOC99, San Diego, CA, 1999, PD3, pp. PD3/1PD3/3. [9] V. Kaman, A. J. Keating, S. Z. Zhang, and J. E. Bowers, Simultaneous OTDM demultiplexing and detection using an electroabsorption modulator, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 12, pp. 711713, June 2000. [10] R. Hess and M. Caraccia-Gross et al., All-optical demultiplexing of 80 to 10 Gb/s signals with monolithic integrated high-performance MachZehnder interferometer, IEEE Photon. Technol. Letters, vol. 10, pp. 165167, Jan. 1998.

[11] S. Diez, C. Schubert, R. Ludwig, H. J. Ehrke, U. Feiste, C. Schmidt, and H. G. Weber, 160 Gbit/s all-optical demultiplexer using hybrid gaintransparent SOA Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Electron. Lett., vol. 36, pp. 14841486, Aug. 2000. [12] A. D. Kersey, M. J. Marrone, and M. A. Davis, Polarization-insensitive fiber optic Michelson interferometer, Electron. Lett., vol. 27, pp. 518520, Mar. 1991. [13] D. Zhou, K. Kang, I. Glesk, and P. Prucnal, An analysis of signal-tonoise ratio and design parameters of a Terahertz Optical Asymmetric Demultiplexer, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp. 298307, Feb. 1999. [14] J. M. Tang, P. S. Spencer, and K. A. Shore, Influence of fast gain depletion on the dynamic response of TOADs, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 16, pp. 8691, Jan. 1998. [15] K. Uchiyama, T. Morioka, S. Kawanishi, H. Takara, and M. Saruwatari, Signal-to-noise ratio analysis of 100 Gbit/s demultiplexing using nonlinear optical loop mirror, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 15, pp. 194201, Feb. 1997. [16] H. X. Shi and J. T. Lin, Theoretical analysis on polarization deviation and switch window optimization in nonlinear optical loop mirror demultiplexer, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp. 25722576, Dec. 1999. [17] N. A. Olsson, Lightwave systems with optical amplifiers, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 7, pp. 10711082, July 1989. [18] G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 2nd ed. New York: Academic, 1995, ch. 11, pp. 471530. [19] R. J. Manning, A. E. Kelly, A. J. Poustie, and K. J. Blow, Wavelength dependence of switching contrast ratio of semiconductor optical amplifier-based nonlinear loop mirror, Electron. Lett., vol. 34, pp. 916918, Apr. 1998. [20] G. Swift, Z. Ghassemlooy, A. K. Ray, and J. R. Travis, Modeling of semiconductor laser amplifier for the Terahertz Optical Asymmetric Demultiplexer, IEE Proc. Circuits Devices Syst., vol. 145, no. 2, pp. 6165, 1998. [21] K. I. Kang, T. G. Chang, I. Glesk, and P. R. Prucnal, Comparison of Sagnac and Mach-Zehnder ultrafast all-optical interferometric switches based on a semiconductor resonant optical nonlinearity, Appl. Opt., vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 417426, 1996. [22] S. Nakamura, Y. Yeno, and K. Tajima, Ultrafast (200-fs switching, 1.5 Tb/s demultiplexing) and high-repetition (10 GHz) operations of a polarization-discriminating symmetric Mach-Zehnder all-optical switch, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 15751577, Nov. 1998.

Hanxing Shi (S98M01) was born in Inner Mongolia, China, in 1973. She received the B.S. degree in physics from Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, in 1994 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 1999. From 1999 to 2001, she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently with Yotta Networks, Inc., Dallas, TX. Her research interests include photonic switching, optical networking, WDMOTDM technologies and optical testing.