Passive optical equalization of wavelength converters based on four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers

We demonstrate equalization of the frequency-shift dependent conversion efficiency of four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). The wavelength converter provides fixed input tunable output wavelength conversion for ten wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) channels with 100-GHz spacing. Equalization is achieved by using a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) at the output of the fixed input tunable output wavelength converter. This method provides constant conversion efficiency to within /spl plusmn/1.5 dB over all WDM channels and can be easily adapted to other types of wavelength conversion.