40-gb/s burst-mode optical 2R regenerator

We have developed a 40-Gb/s burst-mode all-optical 2R regenerator using a limiting amplifier and a monolithic integrated wavelength converter. A limiting amplifier using a gain-saturated semiconductor optical amplifier with an inverted-mode signal can mitigate the pattern effect caused by the a burst-mode signal. By using this 2R regenerator, the 8-dB packet-to-packet power fluctuation of a return-to-zero (RZ) format signal was successfully equalized and the bit-error rate was greatly improved. In addition, we confirmed that a nonreturn-to-zero format signal was equalized by the limiting amplifier as well as the RZ format signals.