Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have been extensively used in a wealth of telecom and datacom applications as a powerful building block that features large optical gain, all-optical gating function, fast response, and ease of integration with other functional semiconductor devices. As fabrication technologies are steadily maturing toward enhanced yield, SOAs are foreseen to play a pivotal role in complex photonics integrated circuits (PICs) of the near future. From a design standpoint, accurate numerical modeling of SOA devices is required toward optimizing PICs response from a system perspective, while enhanced circuit complexity calls for efficient solvers. In this book chapter, we present established experimentally validated SOA numerical modeling techniques and a gain parameterization procedure applicable to a wide range of SOA devices. Moreover, we describe multigrid concepts and implicit schemes that have been only recently presented to SOA modeling, enabling adaptive time stepping at the SOA output, with dense sampling at transient phenomena during the gain recovery and scarce sampling during the steady-state response. Overall, a holistic simulation methodology approach along with recent research trends are described, aiming to form the basis of further developments in SOA modeling.
Part of the book: Some Advanced Functionalities of Optical Amplifiers
Network coding (NC) has recently attracted intense research focus for its potential to provide network throughput enhancements, security and reduced network congestions, improving in this way the overall network performance without requiring additional resources. In this chapter, the all-optical physical-layer network coding (AOPNC) technique is presented, focusing on digital encoding schemes that are based on optical XOR logical gates. It is also discussed how digital AOPNC can be implemented between sub-carrier-modulated (SCM) optical signals in radio-over-fiber (RoF) networks, circumventing the enhanced complexity arising by the use of SCM signals and the asynchrony that might exist between the data arriving at the encoding unit. AOPNC demonstrations are described for simple on/off keyed (OOK)-SCM data signals, as well as for more sophisticated higher-order phase modulation formats aiming to further improve spectrum efficiency and transmission capacity.
Part of the book: Network Coding