All-optical regeneration of differential phase-shift keying signals based on phase-sensitive amplification is described. Nearly ideal phase regeneration can be achieved in the undepleted-pump regime, and simultaneous amplitude and phase regeneration can be realized in the depleted-pump regime.
DPSK phase-and-amplitude regeneration with a NOLM-based phase-sensitive amplifier is demonstrated experimentally. For a highly degraded input signal, maximum differential phase errors were reduced from 82 degrees to 41 degrees , while the SNR was improved by more than 5-dB. Differential phase Q-factor improvement was better than 6-dB. The PSA was operated free of excess noise due to stimulated Brillouin scattering by using a binary phase modulated pulse train as the pump. The impact of pump fluctuations on regeneration performance is clarified. The regenerated signal was characterized by measurement of the constellation diagram by linear optical sampling, giving the first directly measured evidence of DPSK phase regeneration.
Amplification and simultaneous phase regeneration of DPSK signals is demonstrated using a phase-sensitive amplifier. Phase-sensitive gain is achieved in a Sagnac fiber interferometer comprised of nonpolarization maintaining, highly nonlinear fiber operating in the un-depleted pump regime. Both the pump and signal are RZ-DPSK pulse trains. The amplifier is capable of producing greater than 13 dB of phase-sensitive gain for an average pumping power of 100 mW, and easily reduces the BER of the regenerated DPSK signal by two orders of magnitude compared to the un-regenerated signal, corresponding to a negative power penalty of 2 dB. Careful optimization of the regenerator reveals much stronger BER Improvement.
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