Multipurpose WDM Routin

CoreTek Inc. proposes a novel semiconductor-optical-amplifier (SOA) based four-port device that can be used as a wavelength converter, data regenerator, ATM header recognition system, and high-speed bit-error rate tester. These functions are presently performed electronically at low speed and require converting the optical data to an electrical signal. Our device is a novel hybrid of LiNbO3 Mach-Zhender interferometer and SOAs. The device uses the nonlinear phase shift associated with SOAs to make a general purpose, all-optical logic gate operating in the 1550 nm band with speeds exceeding 10 Gbps. This device can be used to duplicate optical data from one wavelength to another, or to make a bit-by-bit NOT-XOR operation between two optical signals. In Phase I CoreTek will demonstrate the feasibility of the approach by constructing the device from in-house components. In Phase II, various components of the multipurpose device will be integrated on a single chip, and the various modes of operation demonstrated. CoreTek's multipurpose SOA-based component can be used in WDM networks as a wavelength converter or as an all-optical data regenerator. It can also be used in its header recognition function in the front-end decision circuit for cross-connect systems as well as in nodes of fiber-optic self-routed networks and optical computer interconnects. Because of its transparency to bit-rate and wide wavelength range of operation, it can be implemented in local and wide-area network nodes of various traffic speeds.