Polarization-insensitive widely tunable wavelength converter using a single semiconductor optical amplifier

Summary form only given.Wavelength conversion is needed to avoid wavelength blocking in wavelength-routed optical networks. Wavelength conversion using four-wave-mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) has the advantages of both transparency and wide tunability but suffers from polarization dependence. In this paper, we report a novel technique which combines a novel polarization diversity configuration (requiring only one SOA) for polarization insensitive wavelength conversion and broadband orthogonal pumps (BOP) to achieve a wide tuning range.