Photonic devices based on optical fibers for telecommunication applications Pantelis Velanas * National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University Campus, 15784 Athens, Greece pvelanas@di.uoa.gr Abstract. In this thesis, all-optical processing for the functionalities of second and third generation optical networks is studied in one hand by means of parametric processes and on the other hand by taking advance of cross phase modulation in highly non-linear optical fibers. Parametric processes are nonlinear effects which arise in optical fibers when high-powered waves are properly placed at proper spectral positions. Through the first part of this thesis an analytical study on the noise characteristics of parametric amplifiers operating at the linear regime is provided taking also into account that the zero dispersion wavelength mapping along fiber’s length varies its value. A useful theoretical model for the noise figure estimation is derived, and a comparative study on the noise properties of non-linear fiber with several zero dispersion wavelength mapping is carried out. In the same part of this thesis a 2R polarization insensitive regenerator based on dual pump parametric processes in fiber is proposed and theoretically studied. Two novel fiber based photonic devices, which based on cross phase modulation in highly non-linear fibers, are proposed in the second part of this thesis. The first proposed fiber device is an all optical ultrafast (160 Gbps) reconfigurable (XOR, OR, AND, NAND, OR, NOR, NOT) photonic logic gates and the second device is an all optical ultrafast (40 Gbps) photonic differentiator which has the ability to produce fist- order and second-order temporal derivatives of an optical RZ modulated signal. The fine operation properties of this device have been experimentally demonstrated. Finally the ability of the proposed all optical differentiator to operate as an UWB signal generator has been studied and proven. The proposed all optical UWB signal generator can be used to indoor wireless access network as a last meters solution in next generation optical access networks. 1 Introduction Within today’s Internet, data is transported using optical fiber transmission and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems that today carry a typical 32-80 wavelengths modulated at 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps per wavelength. Today’s routers and electronic switching systems need to handle almost 0.5 Terabit per second in order to redirect incoming data from fully loaded WDM links. Things become interesting when we consider that the capacity of optical fibers continues to double every 8-12 months. Today’s state-of-the-art single fiber capacity exceeds 10 Tbps. Comparing this increase with that of electronic processor speeds which doubles every 18 months (Moore’s Law) and comes at the expense of increased chip power dissipation we see * Dissertation Advisor: Dimitris Syvridis, Professor