Ultrafast All-optical Self Clock Extraction Based on Two Inline Symmetric Mach-Zehnder Switches

In this paper, we report a novel ultrafast all-optical self clock extraction module (CEM) based on two inline symmetric Mach-Zehnder switches. In the proposed CEM, incoming data packet is used as the control signal to set/reset the imbalance/balance states of the SMZs for extracting the clock pulse, CEM offers fast clock extraction response and high on/off contrast ratio between extracted clock pulse and residual signals. Simulation results show that contrast ratio of more than 20 dB at low input energy (1 fJ) and small required processing time in 100 Gb/s transmission are achievable