Abstract
In this work several numerical methods, usually used to obtain the reflectivity spectrum of Bragg gratings, are studied and general conditions required for each method are analyzed and evidenced. The results are validated by comparison with a closed form analytical solution. For gratings where the solution is not evident, Rouard's method was used as the reference solution.

Abstract
In this work we present a review of all-optical XOR gates based on Mach-Zehnder Interferometer with Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (MZI-SOA), using NRZ modulated signals driven at 10 Gbit/s. The performance of two alternative schemes for logical XOR gates implementation is demonstrated through numerical simulations and experimentally. The extinction ratio shows high operation performance with low degradation. ©2009 IEEE.

Abstract
In this paper, we investigate experimentally the impact of optical amplifiers, namely Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFA) on Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks, operating at 2.5 Gb/s (typical bit rate for current passive optical networks - PON). Bursts with 2(12) - 1 and 2(16) - 1 pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) were studied, with different idle times (from 2 mu s to 80 mu s). The use of traffic with variable idle time was assessed in order to evaluate the effect on the burst initial amplitude. We also analyzed the performance of the packet based system by measuring the Q factor at the receiver and concluded that the performance is not affected by the type of traffic (variable or fixed idle times).

Abstract
The feasility of Raman amplification solutions for extended reach WDM ring PON in C+L transmission bands is studied for rural scenario in normal and resilient operation.

Abstract
A novel architecture for an optical phase modulator is presented and experimentally demonstrated. This approach relies on a commercially available integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure with Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (MZI-SOA) and it is based in cross-phase modulation effect (XPM). The feasibility of the proposed optical phase modulator is experimentally investigated using different scenarios of input power and bit rates.

Abstract
An all-optical clocked set-reset flip-flop is experimentally demonstrated. It is based on a hybrid-integrated S-R latch and two additional Mach-Zehnder interferometer structures with semiconductor optical amplifiers acting as AND logic gates. The switching behaviour of the synchronous S-R flip-flop was investigated and 18 dB extinction ratio performance was achieved.