Experimental and theoretical investigation of electro-optic and all-optical implementations of wavelength converting 2R-regenerators

Summary form only given. We investigate and compare the regenerative capability of electro-optic wavelength converters based on electrically controlled external Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulators and all-optical wavelength converters based on all-optically controlled external MZ modulators. The latter incorporates semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) as optically controlled phase shifters. Experiments demonstrate a 5-6 dB noise suppression capability for both the electro-optic and the all-optical implementation of the wavelength-converting regenerators. The performance can be further improved by cascading two converters resulting in 8 dB noise suppression. This is considered a realistic approach for the compact all-optical converter. The experiments are supported by detailed modeling.