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

Abstract

This work assesses the prospects for high-speed all-optical wavelength conversion using the simple optical interaction with the gain in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) via the interband carrier recombination. Operation and design guidelines for conversion speeds above 10 Gb/s are described and the various tradeoffs are discussed. Experiments at bit rates up to 40 Gb/s are presented for both cross-gain modulation (XGM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) in SOAs demonstrating the high-speed capability of these techniques.