All-optical wavelength conversion of spectrally-efficient modulation formats for future networks

We present simulation results of a wavelength conversion scheme that adds no additional phase-noise to the converted signal. The scheme uses an optical comb generator as the pump source in a wavelength converter based on nondegenerate four-wave mixing. The comb source ensures that no phase noise is transferred from the pumps to the converted signal. We underscore the ability of this conversion scheme by showing that after a two-stage conversion, that the only impairment is the additive noise from the active elements. Such a scheme is necessary for implementing multiple conversions of spectrally efficient modulation formats in future optical networks.