Design and performance of a monolithically integrated widely tunable all-optical wavelength converter with independent phase control

Author

M.L. Masanovic;V. Lal;J.A. Summers;J.S. Barton;E.J. Skogen;L.A. Coldren;D.J. Blumenthal

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Univ. of California Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Volume

16

Issue

10

fYear

2004

Firstpage

2299

Lastpage

2301

Abstract

We report on a new widely tunable all-optical wavelength converter consisting of a sampled-grating distributed Bragg reflector (SGDBR) laser monolithically integrated with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer semiconductor optical amplifier (MZI-SOA)-based wavelength converter. The new design incorporates independent phase control of the interferometer and SOAs for amplification of the SGDBR output. For the first time, error-free operation for data rates of up to 10 Gb/s is reported for 35-nm output tuning range. The high-speed operation is enabled by high photon density in the SOA due to large power transfer from the on-board tunable laser and amplifiers. We also report on device sensitivity of -10 dBm at 2.5 Gb/s and -5 dBm at 10 Gb/s, with an average output power of 0 dBm.

Keywords

"Phase control","Tunable circuits and devices","Optical wavelength conversion","Semiconductor optical amplifiers","Laser tuning","Distributed Bragg reflectors","Semiconductor lasers","Optical interferometry","Error-free operation","Optical tuning"

Journal_Title

IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2004.834448

Filename

1336909