EFFECT OF TIMING JITTER ON AN OPTICALLY CONTROLLED PICOSECOND OPTICALSWITCH

Timing jitter between optical control and signal pulses seriously degr ades the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of optically controlled opti cal switches in the picosecond region. BER's measured in a pincosecond all-optical switch based on nonlinear fiber Sagnac interferometer swi tching reveal that the rms signal-to-control timing jitter must be les s than 1/12 of the switching window to achieve BER < 10(-9).