Abstract

Recently remote all-optical control and switching of gain of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers were introduced in the literature. By using such systems a switching speed of about 10 ns can be achieved. A second pump beam with short duration, high-energy pulses at wave lengths within the amplifier bandwidth is used to control the gain of the fiber amplifier. By coupling short lengths of gain controlled fiber amplifiers with a fiber-bundle-type tapped delay line it is possible to make programmable fiber optic delay lines in which the power of each tap output is optically controlled remotely. All-optical FIR and HR digital filters, time-integrating correlators, bit pattern encoders and decoders, logic gates, and other signal processors can be designed easily and efficiently by using programmable fiber optic delay lines for real-time, high-speed processing of guided light-wave signals.

© 1992 Optical Society of America