40-Gb/s all-optical wavelength conversion, regeneration, and demultiplexing in an SOA-based all-active Mach-Zehnder interferometer

All-optical 2R and 3R regeneration techniques are investigated at 40 Gb/s. It is shown that an all-active SOA-based Mach-Zehnder device, employed as a wavelength converter, is capable of improving the OSNR by more than 20 dB at this bit rate, thereby resulting in penalty reduction. Furthermore, simultaneous all-optical wavelength conversion and demultiplexing from 40 to 10 Gb/s is demonstrated showing that the scheme, which also has a 3R regeneration capability, is feasible in a combined OTDM/WDM network.