Hybrid WDM - OTDM technologies using semiconductor optical amplifiers for networking, instrumentation and signal processing

Summary form only given. This work combines the benefits of both time and frequency domains for optical signal processing applications using semiconductor optical amplifier technology. Specifically, this approach exploits the parallelism provided by wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) approaches and also relies on the high speed single channels rates offered by optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) technologies. This unique marriage of WDM and OTDM is exemplified in 3 important application areas: (1) high performance optical links, (2) novel optical sampling architectures and (3) the realization of an optical arbitrary waveform generator. The resulting key benefit of this approach is that one can realize cost effective, high performance, state-of the-art optical information systems without requiring the performance limits of a pure WDM or OTDM approach.