All-optical data format conversion between RZ and NRZ based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometric wavelength converter

Author

Xu, Lei ; Wang, Bing C. ; Baby, Varghese ; Glesk, Ivan ; Prucnal, PAul R.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Princeton Univ., NJ, USA

Volume

15

Issue

2

fYear

2003

Firstpage

308

Lastpage

310

Abstract

We demonstrate all-optical conversion between two different data formats: return-to-zero (RZ) and nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) using a Mach-Zehnder interferometric wavelength converter. For RZ-to-NRZ conversion, a duplication scheme is demonstrated to reduce the ripples caused by the carrier recovery of the semiconductor optical amplifier. The relationship between the ripple-to-signal ratio and the number of pulse duplications is numerically analyzed. For the NRZ-to-RZ conversion, the wavelength converter also shows high performance. The converted RZ signal has a negative power penalty to the NRZ signal due to the change of the data format.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; optical fibre networks; optical pulse compression; optical wavelength conversion; semiconductor optical amplifiers; Mach-Zehnder interferometric wavelength converter; NRZ-to-RZ conversion; RZ-to-NRZ conversion; all-optical data format conversion; carrier recovery; duplication scheme; optical networks; ripple reduction; ripple-to-signal ratio; semiconductor optical amplifier; High speed optical techniques; Nonlinear optical devices; Nonlinear optics; Optical fiber networks; Optical interferometry; Optical pulses; Optical signal processing; Optical wavelength conversion; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Wavelength conversion;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2002.806105

Filename

1174155