Experimental study of a phase modulator using an active interferometric device

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.