Optical 3R regenerator for 40 Gbit/s networks

Abstract

A technological approach is presented for a compact optical 3R regenerator consisting of a monolithic InP Mach-Zehnder interferometer decision gate, incorporating semiconductor optical amplifiers, and an electronic clock recovery unit driving a simplistic 40 GHz optical clock source. Bit error rate measurements for 40 Gbit/s regeneration demonstrate a penalty < 2 dB over a wide wavelength range.