All-optical wavelength conversion scheme based on 20 Gb/s RZ data

Summary form only given.High-speed all-optical wavelength converters are essential components of future wavelength division multiplexed optical networks. Semiconductor-optical-amplifier (SOA) based wavelength converters operating up to 40 Gb/s are becoming attractive because of their small size and integrability. Wavelength conversion in the SOA can be achieved either by cross-gain modulation (XGM) in a single amplifier or by cross phase modulation (XPM) in two amplifiers placed in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). We demonstrate a hybrid scheme of a single-SOA and asymmetric MZI (AMZI) for wavelength conversion of 20 Gb/s RZ format data.