Performance Evaluation of a Silicon Waveguide for Phase Regeneration of a QPSK Signal

In this paper a silicon-on-insulator nanorib waveguide with reverse-biased p-i-n-junction is used to experimentally demonstrate phase-sensitive amplification based on four-wave mixing for the realization of an in-line four-level phase-regenerator. Phase regeneration of a 14-GBd quadrature phase-shift keying signal is demonstrated for the first time employing a silicon waveguide as phase sensitive amplifier. The regenerator is placed in a 1040-km dispersion-managed link and it is shown that phase noise accumulation in the transmission link can be reduced by the use of the in-line silicon-based phase-regeneration.