ABSTRACT
Beside their high speed, all-optical devices could help to substantially reduce the power consumption of current optical network equipments involving optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversions [16]. The all-optical devices of interest for high-speed networks include all-optical wavelength converters, all-optical switches, and all-optical logic gates. These alloptical devices will also enable ultrafast all-optical signal processing and computing. The reason why all-optical devices have not yet seen large insertion in practice is because they are still marginal in performance for the desired device properties. The desired properties for an all-optical switching device include [17]:
(a) High speed: High operating speed of 10-100 Gbit/s or faster. (b) Low switching power: Low switching power of several mW so that
on-chip semiconductor lasers can be used. (c) Low throughput loss: Low throughput loss or signal gain (the
output or “switched” signal is of comparable or higher power than input signal), which is important for multiple device cascadability.
