Optical Data Buffering Based on Stimulated-Brillouin-Scattering-Induced Acoustic Storage in an As2Se3 Fiber

Buffering of a 2.5 Gb/s bit stream with non-return-to-zero format is numerically demonstrated based on stimulated- Brillouin-scattering-induced acoustic storage in an As₂Se₃ fiber. The storage process and the retrieval process of the bit stream are separately controlled by a "write" pulse and a "read" pulse. Simulation results show that output signal-to-noise ratio of 21 dB, 18 dB, 16 dB, and readout efficiency of 71%, 47%, 31% can be achieved after 5-ns, 10-ns, 15-ns storage, respectively. The "write" and "read" pulses are chirped Gaussian ones with single pulse energy of ~0.25 muJ and spectrum-width of ~5 GHz, which are technically achievable. Buffering of a consecutive 10- bit-long 2.5 Gb/s non-return-to-zero bit stream has also been demonstrated in the As₂Se₃ fiber with length of 0.5 m. This buffering method can be used for all-optical buffering in optical communication systems.