The NOT-NOR (NOR) logic gate is a general-purpose gate that is employed to create any logic operation, build combinational logic circuits, manage packet contention, and monitor bit error rate.

The all-optical logic operations supported by the carrier reservoir semiconductor optical amplifier (CR-SOA) are thought to be supported at higher data speeds while overcoming the slow gain response of the standard SOA.

In the paper published in Optical and Quantum Electronics, the authors have extended, completed, and generalized their prior work on logic gates using CR-SOAs by computationally investigating the NOR logic gate at 120 Gb/s on-off keying of return-to-zero pulse format.

The dependence of the NOR gate’s quality factor (Q-factor) on various key operating parameters, such as the input power, the injection bias current, and the data rate is examined by comparison between CR-SOAs and conventional SOAs.

The effect of amplified spontaneous emission noise on the Q-factor for both CR-SOA and conventional SOA is also taken into account for more realistic calculations.

The results showed that the NOR logic function can be executed correctly and with high quality using CR-SOAs, which is not possible when resorting to conventional SOAs.