PIERS Proceedings, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009

1286

An All Optical XOR Logic Gate for NRZ Based on TOAD

Yaping Wang, Chongqing Wu, Xiaojun Shi,
Shuangshou Yang, and Yongjun Wang
Key Lab of Education Ministry on Luminescence and Optical Information Technology
Institute of Optical Information, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Abstract All-optical XOR logic gate is a basic and crucial element for optical signal processing. With introducing assistant light, we proposed and simulated a novel all optical XOR gate
for NRZ based on teraherz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (TOAD). Simulation results shows
that this program can get 13.29 dB extinction ratio (ER) of XOR logic operation output. The
analysis of impact of nonlinear phase shift difference departure from and 2 in actual system
shows that when a fluctuant rang of nonlinear phase shift difference is confined within 0.1 rad,
13 dB extinction ratio of output is still obtained with assistant light injection. Its validity is
confirmed through experiments and simulation at 2.5 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s, respectively.
1. INTRODUCTION

For high-speed optical communication networks, all-optical logic devices required in optical adddrop multiplexers and optical cross connects perform networking functions [1], such as clock extraction [2], signal regeneration, addressing, header recognition [3], data encoding, encryption, etc.
Recently, the XOR logic gate has attracted particular attention because it is a key element to
perform a wide range of operations such as packet header processor, label swapping, counting,
pattern matching, decisior and comparison, pseudo-random bit generation and so on [4, 5]. In
order to realize all optical XOR gate, various configurations have been reported that utilize the
ultrafast nonlinear properties of the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) including from 10 Gb/s
to 160 Gb/s all optical XOR gate based on the single SOA structure using cross gain modulation (XGM), and interferometric structures such as the terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer
(TOAD), the ultrafast nonlinear interferometer (UNI) and Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI),
etc [69]. XOR gate using SOA MZI and differential packet format have been deployed to overcome
the strong speed limitations, but its structure is complicated and requires precise synchronization.
XOR scheme based on UNI has been demonstrated at 100 Gb/s, but it needs accurate control of
polarization. Sokoloff et al. demonstrated XOR gate based on TOAD. TOAD exploits the strong,
slow optical nonlinearities present in semiconductor and permits control and signal pulses to be
distinguished by polarization or wavelength, and it requires less than 1 pJ switching energy. But
this structure which input the clock as probe light and requires clock synchronization between
signal and clock only realize XOR gate for RZ. To the best of our knowledge, there is no report
for all optical XOR gate for NRZ based on TOAD. This paper proposes a scheme for all optical
XOR gate for NRZ based on TOAD. The feasibility of this scheme is theoretically analyzed with
the principle of TOAD. Based on this, All optical XOR gate operation at 40 Gb/s is successfully
simulated. The experiment give chance to demonstrate all of the possibilities of XOR gate.
2. OPERATION PRINCIPLE

Figure 1 illustrates the configuration of the all optical XOR gate. When two synchronizing signals
as control beams are introduced into loop via WDM, control level will send out frame synchronizing
signal as the probe beam at different wavelength from the two signals. The probe injected into the
loop from port 1 is split into two components that propagate clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise
(CCW) and recombining at the base 50 : 50 coupler.
An SOA used as a nonlinear element is placed at the center of the loop, while tunable fiber
delay lines (DL) are used to introduce the desired displacement of SOA. Therefore, the whole CW
component passes the SOA before the arrival of CCW component. Assumed Ei and Ei0 (i = 1, 2, 3, 4)
are input and output the light electric field of coupler, then

2
2
j
2
2
E
E3
1

(1)
=
E2
E4
2 2
j 2 2
When the signals (PC ) and probe beam (Pp ) through the SOA, the two counterpropagating probes
obtain a differential phase shift cw (t), ccw (t) and gain Gcw , Gccw via cross-phase modulation and

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009

signal 1
1553.4n

assistant light
1554.9nm

circulator
m WDM

SOA WDM

signal 2
1554.3n

circulator

WDM

DL
4

3
frame
1555.7nm

1287

coupler

XOR output

Figure 1: The configuration of XOR gate using TOAD.

cross-gain modulation in the SOA, where Psat is saturation power, Gcw and

Pc + Pp
Gcw = G0 exp (1 Gcw )
,
Psat

Pp
Gccw = G0 exp (1 Gccw )
,
Psat

(2)
(3)

Gccw , cw (t) and ccw (t) are the gain and phase shift of CW and CCW probes in the SOA,
respectively. The relation of gain and phase shift is shown as Eq. (2)
1
( ) = ln[G( )]
2

(4)

the nonlinear phase shift difference will be:

=

[(1 Gcw ) (Pc + Pp ) (1 Gccw ) Pp ]

2

(5)

where is line width enhancement factor, G0 is the small signal gain, Ps is the saturation power.
The light electric fields which travel along the ring for a round trip and then reenter the coupler
can be expressed as:
#

0 "
2
j
G
kE
E3
ccw
1
(6)
= 2
2
E40
Gcw kE1 exp (j)
2

where k is the loss of the loop. The output from port 2 is the interference of E30 and E40 , and shown
as

p
1 p
E20 =
Gccw k Gcw k exp (j) E1
(7)
2
h
i
p
p
1
P20 = kPclk Gccw 2 Gccw Gcw cos + Gcw
(8)
4
It can be seen that the output power depends on the gain and the nonlinear phase difference.
According to the Eqs. (5) and (8), when signals 1 and 2 are different, nonlinear different phase shift
is 1 = and the gain of count-propagating components are Gcw1 and Gccw . As they recombine
Table 1.
Signal 1

Signal 2

XOR

1
0

0
1

1
1

PIERS Proceedings, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009

1288

and interfere, the output power of port 2 achieve maximum. When signals 1 and 2 are both 1,
nonlinear different phase shift is 2 = 2 and the gain of count-propagating components is Gcw2 ,
Gccw , respectively. They will be reflected from the coupler. When signals 1 and 2 are both 0,
phase shift and the gain of count-propagating components are equal. They also will be reflected
from the coupler. Thus, the XOR function is realized. The truth table of the XOR is shown in the
Table 1.
Based on the analyzes above and Eq. (5),
(1 Gcw2 ) (Ptal + Pp ) (1 Gccw ) Pp = 2 [(1 Gcw1 ) (Pc1 + Pp ) (1 Gccw ) Pp ] .

(9)

Pout /mW

where Ptal = Pc2 + Pc1 , Pc1 , Pc2 is the power of signals pulse, spectively. According to Eq. (2),
Gcw2 > Gcw1 , so Pc2 > Pc1 . In order to avoiding competition of two signal with differential power
in the SOA, the assistant light Pass is introduced into devise. At this time, the Eq. (9) comes into
existence with Ptal = 2Pc1 .
The comparison between with and without the assistant light shown in Fig. 2, when the nonlinear
phase shift difference is , 2, respectively. According to the gain curve in Fig. 2 and the relationship
between gain and phase shift in the Eqs. (3) and (4), a, b are the dots which give rise to , 2

c
a

P in /mW
P'c1
P'tal
assistant light
Pc1

Ptal

Power

Figure 2: The comparison between with and without the

assistant light.
Table 2.

Figure 3: Output of XOR.

Parameters

values

SOA length

500 m

SOA spontaneous lifetime

16 ps

SOA small signal gain

20 dB

SOA transparent carrier density

1024 m3

SOA line-width enhancement

SOA active area

3 1013 m2

SOA saturation power

11.6 mW

probe pulse width (FWHM)

10 ps

Probe pulse power

0.2 mW

Assitant light power

2.597 mW

Dual signal pulse power

6.415 mW

SNR of input

20 dB

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009

1289

phase shift without assistant light, and c, d are the dots which give rise to , 2 phase shift with
assistant light. Obviously, the power of two signal pulses is equal by introducing assistant light.
3. SIMULATION

A data stream 11100111000 110011 is compared with data stream 11001110011100011. The main
parameters are shown in the Table 2.
The simulation results at 40 Gb/s are shown in Fig. 3. The extinction ratio of output will achieve
13.29 dB.
It is impossible to fix the power of assistant light and signals on the precise value in experiment.
Therefore, on the supposition Ptal = 2Pc1 , Pass and Pc1 will be adjusted with the considerations of
1 + 2 = 3 and 1 2 < 2, where is a fluctuant rang of nonlinear phase shift
difference. Fig. 4 shows the curve of 1 , 2 against Pass , and Fig. 5 shows the curves of Pc1
against Pass and ER of output against Pass .

Figure 4: Phase shift difference against the power of

assistant light with consideration of 1 +2 = 3
and 1 2 < 2.

Figure 5: The power of siganl pulse and ER against

the power of assistant light with consideration of
1 + 2 = 3 and 1 2 < 2.

As can be seen in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5, when Pass = 2.597 mW and Pc1 = 6.415 mW, the nonlinear
phase shift difference 1 = , 2 = 2. If fluctuant rang of nonlinear phase shift difference is restricted within 0.1 rad, the rangs of Pass is from 2.017 mW to 3.095 mW and of Pc1 is from 6.289 mW
to 6.514 mW. The ER of output is more than 13 dB and increasing with the Pass [2.017 mW,
3.095 mW].

Figure 6: The output of XOR in experimrntation.

Figure 7: The power of signal pulse and ER against

the power of assistant light in experimrntation.

1290

PIERS Proceedings, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009

4. EXPERIMENTATION

The experimental setup for the all optical XOR logic gate 2.5 Gb/s is shown in the Fig. 1. The
main parameters of SOA are agrees with that of simulation. The wavelength and the power of
signals, assistant light, frame synchronizing signal is 1553.4 nm, 1554.3 nm, 1554.9 nm, 1555.7 nm,
6.415 mW, 2.597 mW, 0.4 mW. The output of XOR is shown in the Fig. 6. This result is a good
agree with the truth table of logic XOR as shown in Table 1 and the simulation result as shown in
Fig. 3.
We fixed the frame synchronizing signal power at 0.4 mW and adjusted the signal power with
the assistant light power increasing from 1 mW to 4 mW. In Fig. 7, it is clearly shown that the
signal power and output ER are increased with the assistant light Pass [2.017 mW, 3.095 mW],
and the experimental result is consistent with that of theoretic analysis. Therefore, the demander
of debugging is degraded in experimentation.
5. CONCLUSION

A novel optical XOR logic gate based on TOAD is proposed. The successful demonstration shows
the potential of this scheme to process XOR gate operation for NRZ by inputting assistant light and
frame synchronizing signal as probe beam and adjustting the position of SOA in the loop advisably.
With common SOA, the results of simulation and experimentation shows that this program can get
13.29 dB extinction ratio of output by introduceing advisable assistant light. When fluctuant rang
of the nonlinear phase shift difference is confined within 0.1 rad, the more than 13 dB extinction
ratio of XOR operition still be obtained. Therefore, the demander of debugging is degraded.
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