Widely tunable polarization-independent all-optical wavelength converter using a semiconductor optical amplifier

We report a polarization-independent widely tunable four-wave mixing wavelength converter using polarization diversity and broad-band orthogonal pumps in a single semiconductor optical amplifier. The conversion efficiency is nearly constant (less than 3-dB variation) over a 36-nm range with less than 0.34 dB polarization sensitivity. The power penalty at 10/sup -9/ bit error rate for a 10-Gb/s signal is less than 0.9 dB.