All-optical wavelength converters (AOWCs) based on nonlinear processes of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have attracted interest to overcome the wavelength blocking issues in future transparent networks. While many schemes work well, pattern effect impairments that are due to the finite lifetime of charge carriers are an issue most of the time. Recently, wavelength conversion and pattern effect mitigation techniques that work by properly shaping the passband of filters following the converter have been introduced. However, due to the necessity of selecting filter slope and position precisely, one would expect that the schemes are extremely sensitive to any drift of the center wavelength. In this work, we demonstrate a 40 Gbit/s SOA-based wavelength converter with more than 15 dB dynamic input power range. In addition, the center wavelength of the converted signal has a tolerance of ~0.2 nm towards the red spectral region and of ~0.1nm towards blue spectral region, respectively. This success is due to combining advantageously pattern effect mitigation techniques connected to the pulse reformatting optical filter, the red-shift and the blue-shift optical filter.

Date Published: 18 November 2008
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7135, Optoelectronic Materials and Devices III, 713525 (18 November 2008);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7135:
Optoelectronic Materials and Devices III
Yi Luo; Jens Buus; Fumio Koyama; Yu-Hwa Lo, Editor(s)