All-Optical Signal Processing with Ultralong Bulk Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers for Data Rates above 100Gb/s

With increasing data rates in optical communication networks, high-speed solutions are needed. Using an ultralong bulk semiconductor optical amplifier (bulk UL-SOA), we present numerical results for wavelength conversion with extinction ratio (ER) improvement of 100Gb/s-RZ50% OOK signals. The purpose of UL-SOAs is to benefit from the semiconductor´s fast nonlinear intraband effects, while slow interband effects should be suppressed as far as possible in order to avoid bit pattern effects. Unlike in SOAs, the main part of UL-SOAs is deeply saturated by the amplified signals and the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) after a certain length.