160 Gbit/s SOA all-optical wavelength converter and assessment of its regenerative properties

Pattern Effect Mitigation Technique Using Optical Filters for Semiconductor-Optical-Amplifier Based Wavelength Conversion

“…Among them, the differential Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) (Tajima, 1993), the differential Sagnac loop (Eiselt et al, 1995), the ultrafast nonlinear interferometer (UNI) (Hall & Rauschenbach, 1998) and the delay interferometer (DI) configurations (Leuthold et al, 2000), which exploit the XPM effect enable speeds beyond the limit due to the SOA carrier recovery times. Recently, a new wavelength converter with an SOA followed by a single pulse reformatting optical filter (PROF) has been introduced (Leuthold et al, 2004b). In (Leuthold et al, 2004b), an experiment implementing a PROF based on MEMS technology demonstrated wavelength conversion at 40 Gbit/s, with record low input data signal powers of −8.5 and −17.5dBm for non-inverted and inverted operation.…”

“…Recently, a new wavelength converter with an SOA followed by a single pulse reformatting optical filter (PROF) has been introduced (Leuthold et al, 2004b). In (Leuthold et al, 2004b), an experiment implementing a PROF based on MEMS technology demonstrated wavelength conversion at 40 Gbit/s, with record low input data signal powers of −8.5 and −17.5dBm for non-inverted and inverted operation. This is almost two orders of magnitudes less than typically reported for 40 Gbit/s wavelength conversions.…”

“…Several filters have been proposed. These are the pulse-reformatting optical filter (PROF) (Leuthold et al, 2004a), the red-shift optical filter (RSOF) (Leuthold et al, 2003), the blueshift optical filter (BSOF) (Leuthold et al, 2003;Nielsen et al, 2003;Liu et al, 2007), and a delay interferometer (DI) filter scheme (Leuthold et al, 2000;Leuthold et al, 2004b). The PROF scheme can be understood as follows.…”

40 Gb/s all-optical unicast and multicast wavelength converter array on an InP monolithically integrated chip fabricated by MPW technology

“…Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are particularly suitable for AOWC in terms of their photonic integration potential, small footprint and low power consumption. The study of SOA-based AOWC using discrete components has matured for systems operating at 10-40 Gb/s [4] and several demonstrations at higher bit rates operation (up to 320 Gb/s [5][6][7]) have taken place. Schemes for integrated wavelength converters have begun to attract increasing interest as they benefit from the small footprint photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer as well as the eliminated component-tocomponent coupling losses [8,9].…”

Semiconductor based demultiplexer and wavelength conversion at 320 Gbits/sec

“…Demultiplexers and wavelength converters that utilize nonlinearities in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have attracted considerable research interest due to their integration ability and power efficiency [1]. A number of SOA-based approaches have been demonstrated [2][3][4][5], but, the slow SOA recovery time (typically several tens to hundred ps) can cause unwanted pattern effects in the converted signal, which limits the maximum operation speed.In this paper, we present error-free and pattern-independent time-domain demultiplexing and wavelength conversion at 320 Gb/s using a single SOA. To our knowledge, this is the highest operation speed for error-free SOA-based signal processing ever reported.…”