Silicon Chip based Wavelength Conversion of Ultra-High Repetition Rate Data Signals

Wavelength conversion and unicast of 10-Gb/s data spanning up to 700 nm using a silicon nanowaveguide

“…Finally, the complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatibility of these devices make the silicon nanowaveguides an ideal prospect for repeatable mass-production of very low-footprint low-cost devices, as well as enabling close integration with electronics. As FWM in silicon is virtually bit-rate and format transparent it can facilitate multiple all-optical data functionalities such as signal regeneration [20], multicasting [21], wavelength conversion [22], and demultiplexing [23] at symbol rates even greater than 1 Tbaud/s, with both on-off keyed [20,21,23] and phase-modulated data [22], but to date these functionalities have been data-measurement validated in silicon with only up to 100-nm probe-idler separations [24].…”

Simultaneous wavelength conversion of ASK and DPSK signals based on four-wave-mixing in dispersion engineered silicon waveguides

“…As data rates in broadband optical networks continues to grow, all-optical signal processing technologies are expected to become essential for energy efficient optical switch fabrics since signal manipulation based on optical-electrical-optical (OEO) interfaces will become too complex and power hungry at high multichannel data rates. Optical parametric processing platforms enable power efficient and ultra-fast signal processing functionalities for wavelength converters [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], wavelength multicasters [11,12], tunable delays [13], regenerators [14], amplifiers [15], as well as temporal demultiplexers [16,17]. Among these functionalities, wavelength converters are critical building blocks for wavelength-divisionmultiplexed (WDM) systems as they can help avoid wavelength contention problems and increase overall system flexibility.…”

“…Ideally in such a system, it is required to be format transparent, i.e., mixed-format channels can be wavelength converted in a single device over a wide wavelength range. Parametric wavelength converters based on four-wave-mixing (FWM) have been demonstrated in highly-nonlinear fiber (HNLF) [6], photonic crystal fiber (PCF) [7], semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) [8], periodically poled LiNbO 3 (PPLN) [9], chalcogenide waveguides [10], as well as silicon waveguides [1][2][3][4][5]. However, these demonstrations cannot fully satisfy the aforementioned requirements.…”