Damiano Rossetti

Coherent-to-incoherent light conversion for optical correlators

The authors present a novel coherent-to amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) converter based on SOAs cross-gain modulation (XGM) in a counterpropagating configuration. Experimental characterizations of the ASE converter with bit-error rate (BER) measurements at 2.5 and 5 Gb/s are shown. The device capabilities are exploited in a delay lines optical recognizer at 2.5 Gb/s. Recognition is based on a coherent-to-incoherent light conversion followed by a fiber array correlation filter. Experimental evidence here reported shows performance improvement in comparison with a scheme which adopts a standard telecom source.

Cross-talk performance comparison among different OXC architectures

Crosstalk performance of different OXC architectures are compared through simulations and preliminary experiments. We show that a careful OXC design can remove limitation due to imperfect switch (in experimentation a thermo-optical element) operation.

Cross-talk-limited cascadability of different OXC architectures

Summary form only given. Optical cross connects (OXC) are likely to play a key role in future all-optical networks. Their core is a space switching matrix, whose properties heavily influence the overall OXC performance. Particular attention is paid to homodyne crosstalk which accumulates through subsequent filtering.The aim of this work is to experimentally evaluate cross-talk impact on OXC cascadability. A short recirculating loop simulates a 2.5 Gbit/s signal propagating through 100 km-long links connected by OXC (i.e. a meshed continental network) adding homodyne incoherent cross-talk.

Brillouin penalty in Kerr-based nonlinear devices

Summary form only given. Recent work showed cross-phase modulation (XPM) has interesting features, almost unlimited speed of operation and wide operation bandwidth, for all-optical signal processing such as in nonlinear optical loop mirror-based wavelength conversion. Yet long fiber length requirement together with optical amplifiers needed to obtain suitable phase shift may affect the conversion process due to stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) on the drive signal. We demonstrated that high penalty in XPM-based nonlinear device arises from SBS effects when operating with a standard linewidth telecommunication laser.