Effect of phase noise in the chromatic dispersion compensation by FWM in semiconductor optical amplifiers

Summary form only given. The intermingling of laser source chirping and chromatic dispersion characteristics of single-mode optical fibres limits the bit-rate and span product of transmission links. Several approaches have been investigating to compensate chirping/dispersion. In this paper we consider the use of spectral inversion technique by four wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA´s). Such devices could be key components, such as wavelength converters, of future WDM networks and could be basic elements for the realisation of photonic switches in the wavelength domain. In this paper we investigate the effect of the phase noise of semiconductor lasers used as pumps in the wavelength converters on the transmission performances