Polarization insensitive frequency converter with the capability of chirp removal

We report on a new type of polarization insensitive frequency conversion technique using four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). In this technique the input signal is spectrally duplicated by a Mach-Zehnder type phase modulator. Then, the resulting two waves generate the frequency converted output signal by FWM with use of an additional pump wave. The converted output wavelength is independent of the wavelength of the input signal. In addition to the frequency conversion, the chirp of the input signal is removed by the FWM process bit-error-rate (BER)-measurements after transmission of the converted signal over standard communication fiber are reported.