Optical Wavelength and Waveband Converters

Wavelength conversion has been acknowledged as one of the most significant optical processing functions and various papers have been involved with investigating methods of translating very high bit-rate data into other wavelengths. This paper will give an overview of the recent advances in the area, with emphasis on methods that can be used as both wavelength and waveband converters, which can be used at higher bit rates without any configuration changes and are integratable and hence compact solutions. Four-wave mixing in SOAs is one of these techniques and we will elaborate on particulars of this technique. Switch architectures that benefit from wavelength and waveband conversion are presented