0.5-Tb/s eye-diagram measurement by optical sampling using XPM-induced wavelength shifting in highly nonlinear fiber

In this letter, we report on a novel all-optical sampling scheme using cross-phase modulation-induced wavelength shifting and optical filtering. Up to 500-Gb/s optical signal eye-diagram measurements have been demonstrated for the first time with a temporal resolution of 0.7 ps. Signal operational wavelength range covering basically the whole erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain range (1535-1569 nm) with temporal resolutions equal to or less than 1 ps was also demonstrated in the experiment. These results show that the sampling system is suitable for directly monitoring and evaluating ultrahigh bit-rate optical time-division multiplexed data at or above 160 Gb/s.