New simulative studies on performance of semiconductor optical amplifier based optical switches like frequency converter and add-drop multiplexer for optical data processors

Optics has proved its successful role in parallel logic, arithmetic or algebraic operations. So many different methods on optical data processing were proposed and implemented in last few decades. For implementing the all optical logic and arithmetic devices it needs different types of encoding principle like, polarization encoding principle, frequency encoding principle, intensity encoding principle and phase encoding principle. As the frequency is the basic characteristics of light, so frequency encoding principle is the most reliable one among all other encoding principles. Currently frequency encoding technique is established as a promising one for all optical processing, as frequency of light does not change normally after reflection, refraction, absorption etc. Again Semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) can be used for different successful frequency conversions. Here in this technique '1' logic state is represented by a frequency ν2 then '0' state is represented by another frequency ν1 instead of intensity variation. In this paper the authors describe the simulation study of the performances of SOA in various optical switches like frequency conversion and add-drop multiplexer. © 2013 Optical Society of India.