Numerical modeling of photonic crystal semiconductor optical amplifiers-based 160 Gb/s all-optical NOR and XNOR logic gates

A photonic crystal (PC) is a periodic optical nanostructure typically containing ordered arrays of holes that confine and control the motion of photons. Moreover, PC strongly modifies the dispersion relationship. The conventional semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), on the other hand, is an attractive nonlinear element due to its strong nonlinearity, compactness, power efficiency, and integration potential with other optoelectronic devices. Thus, we combine the unique features of PC with those of SOA to numerically model ultrafast all-optical NOT-OR (NOR) and exclusive-NOR (XNOR) logic gates at 160 Gb/s. A comparison is made between PCSOAs and conventional SOAs schemes through examining the variation of the quality factor (QF) against the key operational parameters, including the effects of the amplified spontaneous emission and operating temperature, in order to obtain more realistic results. The obtained results confirm that the considered logic operations using PCSOAs are capable of operating at 160 Gb/s with higher QF than when having conventional SOAs.