Effects of pulse width, timing jitter and wavelength detuning of the control pulse in switching solitons using the nonlinear optical loop mirror configuration

In this paper, we investigate numerically the effects of the various parameters of the control pulse on an all-optical controlled switching configuration, using a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) to switch solitons. The peak switching power of the control pulse required to achieve maximum switching efficiency was found to decrease as the width of the control pulse was increased. It is also shown that, due to the Raman effect, more than 100% of maximum switching efficiency of a NOLM can be achieved. Furthermore, when the control pulse width is equal to three times the signal pulse width, a switching efficiency of more than 90% could still be obtained even when the central wavelength of the control pulse is detuned by about 4 nm or when timing jitter is more than 1.5 times the signal pulse width.