title: Limitations of self-phase-modulation-based tunable delay system for all-optical buffer design.
abstract: The distortion, noise, and bit-delay performance of a self-phase-modulation-based tunable delay system are analyzed. The pulse amplification required for achieving large spectral broadening results in large amplifier noise. We quantify the resulting delay versus signal-to-noise ratio trade-off. We demonstrate that for high bit rates it is difficult to achieve both large bit delay and good data fidelity. We find that for a given bit rate, reducing the duty cycle improves the fractional bit delay. For a duty cycle of 16%, a maximum bit delay of 15 bits is achieved.
authors.affiliation: College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. rpant@email.arizona.edu
authors.forename: Ravi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pant
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Stenner
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Neifeld