Widely tunable wavelength converter using a double-ring fiber laser with a semiconductor optical amplifier

Widely tunable wavelength conversion has been demonstrated using broad-band orthogonal-pump four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier placed at the intersection of two fiber ring lasers. The all-optical wavelength converter operates without using any external pump source. A 3-dB conversion-range over 40 nm is obtained. The measured power penalty is 1.5 dB for a 2.5-Gb/s converted signal at 10/sup -9/ bit error rate.