All-optical wavelength conversion at bit rates above 10 Gb/s using semiconductor optical amplifiers

Performance of a SOA-MZI wavelength converter for label swapping using combined FSK/IM modulation format

“…Inverting operation is still preferable above non-inverting, due to its larger regenerative effect. The conversion speed of the present device for the counter-propagation mode is measured to be far slower compared to the co-propagating operation, what is generally the case for SOA-MZI wavelength converters [15]. Therefore, the measurement at 10 Gbit/s is only performed in co-propagating operation mode.…”

“…The counter-propagating operation is not very attractive due to the counter-directional coupling that causes pattern-dependent timing jitter, which limits the cascadeability. Moreover, the conversion speed is limited by a modulation bandwidth, which is inherently lower than for co-directional coupling [13][14][15]. The fastest achieved conversion for counter-propagating operation mode was measured for a non-inverting current setting at 2.5 Gbit/s.…”

Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Nonlinearities and Their Applications for Next Generation of Optical Networks

“…However, the major limitation of SOAbased wavelength converters is the slow SOA recovery, causing unwanted pattern effects in the converted signal and limiting the maximum operation speed of the wavelength converters. It has already been theoretically and experimentally clarified that the increase in electrical pumping power, confinement factor and the device interaction length effectively improve the speed performance (Joergensen et al, 1997). For improving the SOA-based wavelength converters, some techniques are proposed, such as: Fiber Bragg grating at 100 Gbit/s (Ellis et al, 1998), interferometric configuration at 168 Gbit/s (Nakamura et al, 2001), two cascaded SOAs at 170.4 Gbit/s (Manning et al, 2006) and optical filtering at 320 Gbit/s (Liu et al, 2007).…”

Performance Evaluation of Wavelength Conversion Using a Wideband Semiconductor Optical Amplifier at 40 Gbit/s~!2009-11-11~!2010-01-02~!2010-04-07~!

“…However, the major limitation of SOA-based wavelength converters is the slow SOA recovery, causing unwanted pattern effects in the converted signal, and limiting the maximum operation speed of the wavelength converters. It has already been theoretically and experimentally clarified that the increase in electrical pumping power, confinement factor, and interaction device length effectively improve the speed performance [9][10]. For improving the SOA-based wavelength converters, some techniques are proposed, such as: Fiber Bragg grating at 100 Gbit/s [3], interferometric configuration at 168 Gbit/s [11], two cascaded SOAs at 170.4 Gbit/s [12], and optical filtering at 320 Gbit/s [13].…”