Tunable wavelength conversion in a semiconductor-fiber ring laser

A tunable wavelength converter is demonstrated using highly nondegenerate four-wave mixing in a semiconductor-fiber ring cavity with no external pump light and low input signal power requirements. This device allows continuous tuning of both pump and converted wavelengths over the semiconductor optical amplifier gain bandwidth. Results for 11.8-nm down- and 6.9-nm up-wavelength conversion with input signal power as low as -10 dBm have been obtained at 1 Gb/s with less than 1.6-dB power penalty.