Optical labelling through parametric amplification

A new all-optical technique to label on-off keyed (OOK) payload signals is experimentally analysed. Such all-optical operation is accomplished by using a fibre optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) with the pump modulated by label information to amplify the OOK payload; as a result, the signal at the output of the FOPA becomes a ternary-amplitude optical packet (TAOP). It is shown that the technique may generate TAOPs with different power level distributions. Furthermore, the TAOP was propagated through a link on a field-trial network. The obtained eye-penalties are inferior to 0.7 dB and suggest that the optical packet could be properly propagated through metropolitan area networks.