160 Gb/s sub-picosecond transform-limited pulse signal generation utilizing adiabatic soliton compression and optical time-division multiplexing

0.8 ps TL pulses are successfully generated from a gain-switched DFB-LD by adiabatic soliton compression using a dispersion decreasing fiber (DDF). The compression ratio can be controlled using the peak input power into the DDF. We obtain a 10/spl times/2/sup n/ Gb/s pulse stream by optically multiplexing the compressed pulses with a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer type multiplexer, in which n can be freely selected from 1 to 4 by controlling the coupling ratios of the couplers in the MZ interferometers. By using the demonstrated techniques, we can multiplex the initial pulse stream up to 160 Gb/s at the noninterfering duty factor of 0.2.<
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