Mach-Zehnder Interferometer-Based High-Speed OTDM Add-Drop Multiplexing

We propose a modified semiconductor-optical-amplifier-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) setup for high-speed optical time division multiplexing add/drop multiplexing (ADM) operation. It has the property of enabling an independent phase optimization for clear and drop ports simultaneously. It provides, therefore, an improvement of standard SOA-MZI configurations where only one output port can be optimized at each time. A detailed analysis of the ADM performance for operation from 320-Gb/s aggregate bit rates to 10- and 40-Gb/s base data rates is carried out. Theoretical results show an excellent performance for a wide range of operation conditions