Demonstration of two efficient optical 3R data regenerators at 40 Gb/s using EAM or SOA as all-optical decision gate

In this report, we experimentally demonstrate efficient optical 3R regeneration of 40-Gb/s degraded data signals by using two schemes. The first 3R regenerator incorporates a dual-ring injection mode-locked fiber ring laser as the clock recovery module and an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) as the decision gate and the other 3R regenerator consists of an amplified feedback laser (AFL) for all-clock recovery and a semiconductor optical amplifier delayed interferometer (SOA-DI)as the optical decision gate. Optical clock with low timing jitter and uniform amplitude are successfully extracted with the use of the clock recovery units and significant improvement of the signal quality are obtained from 40-Gb/s RZ data signals degraded by polarization mode dispersion (PMD), chromatic dispersion or noise of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE).