All-optical wavelength conversion by electroabsorption modulator

All-optical wavelength conversion using an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) in conjunction with delayed interferometer (DI) is investigated. The optical nonlinearities induced in an EAM were experimentally characterized. High bit-rate wavelength conversion at 100 Gb/s was demonstrated by an EAM-DI wavelength converter with required optical pulse energy of 1.5 pJ. It was verified that the operable bandwidth of the EAM-DI wavelength converter at 40 Gb/s covered almost full range of C-band without tuning operation conditions. These results indicate that the EAM-based wavelength converter is capable for ultrafast wide-band wavelength conversion.