Nonlinear optical thresholding using a saturable absorber and two-photon absorption based device

Optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) has been proposed as an attractive alternative for access networks due to its advantages over current wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and optical time division multiplexing (OTDM), such as asynchronous transmission, fair division of bandwidth and quality of service control. However, OCDMA systems suffer from the phenomenon of multiple access interference (MAI) which is generated by other channels transmitting over the same fibre as the desired data signal. This MAI noise reduces system performance and increases proportionally with the number of channels in the system.