A Research on All-optical Wavelength Conversion Technology based on SOA

With the rapid growth of Internet traffic, user demand being gradually expanding rapidly, which makes people put forward higher requirements on the capacity of optical communication and the function of the optical layer. In this way, researchers are seeking for higher speed, higher quality and larger capacity optical communication networks. All optical wavelength conversion (AOWC) is the key technology to achieve high level all-optical networks. In addition, to further increase the network efficiency and decrease the blocking probabilities, the all optical wavelength conversion (AOWC) is needed to avoid wavelength contention for dynamic optical path switching at the nodes. In this paper, AOWC technology based on semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is investigated. including cross-gain modulation (XGM), cross-phase modulation (XPM) and four-wave mixing (FWM). The implementation, advantages and disadvantages of these schemes are compared and discussed. What is more, the prospects and future development of AOWC is also discussed.