20-nm optical wavelength conversion using nondegenerate four-wave mixing

Wavelength conversion for WDM communication systems using four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers

“…Modulating a high percentage of the input power to the SOA can induce modulation of the SOA gain and cause ISI. To date, most reported experiments have simply maintained a large P/Q ratio and mentioned the possibility of this problem [14], [18]. In this section, we investigate the effect of P/Q ratio on the performance of the wavelength converter.…”

“…Offsetting this advantage are disadvantages associated with polarization dependent conversion as well as the required output filtering of spurious wavelengths. Nonetheless, FWM SOA wavelength converters have demonstrated high bit rate switching between WDM channels [14], [15], [24], dispersion compensation by phase conjugation (or mid-span spectral inversion) [16], [19], timedomain demultiplexing [40], multiplexing format conversion, [41], wavelength conversion of microwave subcarriers [42], and also limited signal processing [43], [44]. In particular, optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), once considered the primary obstacle to any progress toward application of these devices has improved dramatically over the last year and further improvements seem likely.…”

Theory of nondegenerate four-wave mixing between pulses in a semiconductor waveguide

“…with the linear operator defined by (3) where is the wavenumber change from the reference value , and (4) is the net modal gain, with being the confinement factor, the material gain, and the internal loss. The source term is given by (5) where is the response function of the medium (see Appendix A), calculated using the adiabatic approximation for the dynamics of the medium polarization [18].…”

“…Dispersion compensation using midspan spectral inversion [1], wavelength conversion [2], [3], and demultiplexing of high-bit-rate time-division multiplexed pulse trains [4] are important examples of all-optical signal processing techniques based on FWM, which have been experimentally demonstrated to have a significant potential in future broadband optical networks. In addition, FWM has shown to be a useful spectroscopic technique for investigating the physical origin of ultrafast nonlinearities in active semiconductor waveguides [5]- [8].…”

Mutual optical injection in coupled DBR laser pairs

“…beyond the locking bandwidth, the primary nonlinear phenomenon we would expect to see is four-wave mixing in the SOA [29,30]. This is illustrated in Fig.…”