Experimental study on all-optical half-adder based on semiconductor optical amplifier

• Published in: Optoelectronics letters Vol. 5; no. 3; pp. 161 - 164
• Main Authors: Han, Bing-chen, Yu, Jin-long, Wang, Wen-rui, Zhang, Li-tai, Hu, Hao, Yang, En-ze
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Tianjin University of Technology 01-05-2009
• Subjects: Lasers; Optical Devices; Optics; Photonics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Continuous Wave Signal; XNOR Gate; Wavelength Division Multiplexer; Semiconductor Optical Amplifier; IEEE Photonic Technology Letter
• ISSN: 1673-1905; 1993-5013
• DOI: 10.1007/s11801-009-8219-3

We demonstrate a novel all-optical half-adder based on two semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Two optical bandpass filters are used to select the two idlers generated by four-wave mixing (FWM) effect of the first SOA. Therefore, the AND gate and XNOR logic are realized simultaneously. The second SOA acts as a NOT gate, in which the NOR logic is achieved with the input of the logic XNOR. As a result, the output is the sum of the two input bits and the carry. In the experiment, all-optical half-addition calculation is achieved between two 10 Gb/s signals.