Opt Quant Electron (2009) 41:837–848 DOI 10.1007/s11082-010-9398-7 Circuit model for analysis of SOA-based photonic switch Ipsita Sengupta · Abhirup Das Barman · P. K. Basu Received: 4 October 2009 / Accepted: 20 May 2010 / Published online: 8 June 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2010 Abstract This paper presents an equivalent lumped element electric circuit model for traveling wave semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) in integrated circuit applications. The model facilitates incorporation of chip and package parasitic elements of SOA. The model is used to represent an all optical 2 × 2 switch based on cross gain modulation in SOA capable of operating at an ultra fast speed. SPICE simulation of the switch with the proposed circuit model provides bit error rate (BER) values at the switch output which agrees well with the experimentally measured values at 10Gb/s. The degradation of switching performance has been examined in terms of bit error rate, modulation bandwidth and switching time in the presence of chip parasitic elements of SOA. Keywords Gain recovery · Optical switch · SOA 1 Introduction Up till now most of the network uses optoelectronic conversion at the network node, to process incoming signals electronically. Present state-of-the-art fiber optics communication systems have reached the 10 Terabit-per-second (Tb/s) range, with individual channels having speeds of 40 Gb/s in commercial systems and above 160 Gb/s in research laboratories. These bit I. Sengupta (B ) MCKV Institute of Engineering, 243, G.T. ROAD (North), Liluah, Howrah, 711204 WB, India e-mail: ipsen1980@yahoo.co.in A. Das Barman · P. K. Basu Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata, 700009 WB, India e-mail: abhirup_rp@yahoo.com P. K. Basu e-mail: pkb.rpe@caluniv.ac.in 123