All-optical regenerative OTDM add-drop multiplexing at 40 Gb/s using monolithic InP Mach-Zehnder interferometer

We present a novel method for all-optical add-drop multiplexing having regenerative capability for 40-Gb/s optical time-division multiplexed (OTDM) data using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) based, monolithic Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Simultaneous dropping of one 10-Gb/s channel out of 10-Gb/s OTDM data and perfect clearing of the corresponding time slot in the remaining 3/spl times/10 Gb/s data stream is demonstrated. Bit-error-rate measurements show a low penalty of 2 dB for each 10 Gb/s channel. No extra penalty was observed introducing a 10-Gb/s add channel through the device into the cleared time slot.