Performance of a 4×10 Gbit/s optical time domain multiplexed system using SMZ switching

Optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) is emerging and promising alternative for future high-speed photonic networks because of its ability to accommodate higher bit rate and flexible bandwidth. Among other factors the performance of an OTDM system largely depends upon the switching characteristics of a de-multiplexer (DEMUX). Symmetric Mach–Zehnder (SMZ) have been found to be most suitable than all the available de-multiplexing switches because of compact size, thermal stability, and low power operation. In this paper, we simulate four-channel OTDM systems (all channel multiplexer (MUX) and DEMUX) with a Mach–Zehnder modulator and SMZ DEMUX to investigate the impact of signal power, pulse width and control signal power on BER.