Multi-wavelength conversion and resynchronization of wavelength division multiplexed signals by use of four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier

We have demonstrated synchronization of two channels at 10 Gb/s after propagation in a dispersive fiber (D=17 ps/nm.km) by using a spectral inversion device based on FWM in SOA. A double-wavelength conversion of 2.2 nm and 3.4 nm is simultaneously achieved. Spectrum measurement shows OSNR of more than 30 dB for conjugate signals. A BER measurement has although been achieved and shows that there is no penalty difference between channels for a detuning of 0.6 nm. A 1.1 dB penalty induced by the wavelength conversion, has been measured for both channels. As the conversion range in a SOA is limited to a few nanometers, the nonlinear optical fibers may be a more efficient solution for large number of channels. This technique, transparent to bit rate and format, is transposable to RZ format and can be applied for synchronous modulation in dispersion shifted fiber, promising for extremely high bit rate transmission.