title: Enhanced 40 and 80 Gb/s wavelength conversion using a rectangular shaped optical filter for both red and blue spectral slicing.
abstract: By using a tunable filter with tunability of both bandwidth and wavelength and a very sharp filter roll-off, considerable improvement of all optical Wavelength Conversion, based on Cross Gain and Phase Modulation effects in a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier and spectral slicing, is shown. At 40 Gb/s slicing of blue spectral components is shown to result in a small penalty of 0.7 dB, with a minimal eye broadening, and at 80 Gb/s the low demonstrated 0.5 dB penalty is a dramatic improvement over previously reported wavelength converters using the same principal. Additionally, we give for the first time quantitative results for the case of red spectral slicing at 40 Gb/s which we found to have only 0.5 dB penalty and a narrower time response, as anticipated by previously published theoretical papers. Numerical simulations for the dependence of the eye opening on the filter characteristics highlight the importance of the combination of a sharp filter roll-off and a broad passband.
authors.affiliation: COBRA Research Institute, Eindhoven University of Technology Den Dolech 2 - 5600MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. o.raz@tue.nl
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Raz
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Herrera
authors.forename: H J S
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Dorren