Control Scheme for Optimizing the Interferometer Phase Bias in the Symmetric-Mach-Zehnder All-Optical Switch

Yoshiyasu UENO  Morio TAKAHASHI  Shigeru NAKAMURA  Kouichi SUZUKI  Takanori SHIMIZU  Akio FURUKAWA  Takemasa TAMANUKI  Kazuo MORI  Satoshi AE  Tatsuya SASAKI  Kazuhito TAJIMA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E86-C    No.5    pp.731-740
Publication Date: 2003/05/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section INVITED PAPER (Joint Special Issue on Recent Progress in Optoelectronics and Communications)
Category: OECC Awarded Paper
Keyword: 
all-optical,  control scheme,  demultiplexing,  interferometer,  phase bias,  

Full Text: PDF(4.7MB)>>
Buy this Article


Summary: 
Control scheme for accurately optimizing (and also automatically stabilizing) the interferometer phase bias of Symmetric-Mach-Zehnder (SMZ)-type ultrafast all-optical switches is proposed. In this control scheme, a weak cw light is used as a supervisory input light and its spectral power ratio at the switch output is used as a bipolar error signal. Our experimental result at 168-Gb/s 16:1 demultiplexing with a hybrid-integrated SMZ switch indicates the feasibility and the sensitivity of this control scheme.