Vol.:(0123456789) Optical and Quantum Electronics (2019) 51:221 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-019-1930-9 1 3 Ultrafast optical message encryption–decryption system using semiconductor optical amplifer based XOR logic gate Vipul Agarwal 1  · Monika Agarwal 1  · Prakash Pareek 2  · Vijayshri Chaurasia 3  · S. K. Pandey 4 Received: 3 December 2018 / Accepted: 11 June 2019 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Encryption of information is required to secure data transmitted in optical networks. In this communication, authors propose simple and novel scheme for all-optical encryption– decryption at 120 Gb/s. Encryption–decryption system is based on XOR logic designed using semiconductor optical amplifer (SOA) based Mach–Zehnder interferometers. SOA model is presented theoretically from the stand point of high-speed application and imple- mented in encryption decryption setups for simulation. Extinction ratio for encrypted and decrypted signal is obtained as 10.5 dB and 8.30 dB respectively with satisfactory quality factor. The system has simple, compact architecture and easily integrable with other pho- tonic devices. Keywords Semiconductor optical amplifer · Continuous wave light · Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) · Cross phase modulation · Carrier recovery 1 Introduction Over the time, data volume in an optical communication network has increased dramati- cally due to numerous advantages over copper wire like less attenuation, high data rate, low distortion, lesser energy requirement and immunity towards electromagnetic interfer- ence. Individuals and organizations use public optical network for transmission of highly This article is part of the Topical Collection on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices, NUSOD’ 18. Guest edited by Paolo Bardella, Weida Hu, Slawomir Sujecki, Stefan Schulz, Silvano Donati, Angela Traenhardt. * Vipul Agarwal agarvipul@gmail.com 1 K.L. Deemed to be University, Vaddeswaram, AP, India 2 Vaagdevi Engineering College, Warangal, AP, India 3 MANIT, Bhopal, MP, India 4 IIT Patna, Patna, Bihar, India