Optimal Control of SOAs With Artificial Intelligence for Sub-Nanosecond Optical Switching

Novel approaches to switching ultra-fast semiconductor optical amplifiers using artificial intelligence algorithms (particle swarm optimisation, ant colony optimisation, and a genetic algorithm) are developed and applied both in simulation and experiment. Effective off-on switching (settling) times of 542 ps are demonstrated with just 4.8% overshoot, achieving an order of magnitude improvement over previous attempts described in the literature and standard dampening techniques from control theory.