Optical 3R regeneration for 40 Gbit/s line-rates and beyond

In this paper, two complementary techniques for optical 3R regeneration implementation have been described. The first one is based on synchronous modulation and is dedicated to ultra long-haul transmission applications. It was shown to be fully compatible with dispersion management. The second approach is based on wavelength conversion and uses the nonlinear transfer function resulting from the cascade of two SOA-based Mach-Zehnder interferometers.