Abstract

Optical devices operating as a buffer or as memory are needed in future optical communication systems, for instance, in ATM or packet-switching systems. A promising device is the fiber loop buffer.^1–4 It is expected that the storage time (or number of circulations of data packets in the fiber loop) is affected mainly by accumulated and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and by cross talk. In this contribution we report on what is. to our knowledge, the first experimental study of the effect of cross talk in a fiber-loop buffer and on bit-error-rate (BER) measurements, demonstrating a BER < 10⁻⁹ for as many as N = 23 circulations in the loop.

© 1994 Optical Society of America