Ultrafast all-optical 4-bit digital encoders using differential phase modulation in semiconductor optical amplifier-Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration

Abstract. A novel approach for all-optical digital encoder for both binary-to-gray code and gray-to-binary code have been proposed. Design is based on the basic concept of digital encoder using the exclusive OR (XOR) addition. The XOR gate used in these encoders has been implemented using differential phase modulation between two arms of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), in which a semiconductor optical amplifier is placed symmetrically in both arms of MZI. For the most severely degraded output bit, i.e., least significant bit for gray-to-binary encoder, the extinction ratio obtained is 2.35 while the minimum bit error rate is zero at 10  GB/s. For the second most significant bit of gray-to-binary encoder and for all the three bits except the most significant bit of binary-to-gray encoder, the extinction ratio obtained is around 27 dB. For the most significant bit, as input and output bits are same, the extinction ratio is very high, approaching infinity.