K.E. Stubkjaer

All-optical wavelength conversion by semiconductor optical amplifiers

Following a brief introduction to the applications for wavelength conversion and the different available conversion techniques, the paper gives an in depth analysis of cross gain and cross phase wavelength conversion in semiconductor optical amplifiers. The influence of saturation filtering on the bandwidth of the converters is explained and conditions for conversion at 20 Gb/s or more are identified. The cross gain modulation scheme shows extinction ratio degradation for conversion to longer wavelengths. This can be overcome using cross phase modulation in semiconductor optical amplifiers that are integrated into interferometric structures. The first results for monolithic integrated interferometric wavelength converters are reviewed, and the quality of the converted signals is demonstrated by transmission of 10 Gb/s converted signals over 60 km of nondispersion shifted single mode fiber.

Semiconductor optical amplifier-based all-optical gates for high-speed optical processing

Semiconductor optical amplifiers are useful building blocks for all-optical gates as wavelength converters and OTDM demultiplexers. The paper reviews the progress from simple gates using cross-gain modulation and four-wave mixing to the integrated interferometric gates using cross-phase modulation. These gates are very efficient for high-speed signal processing and open up interesting new areas, such as all-optical regeneration and high-speed all-optical logic functions.

Wavelength conversion in optical packet switching

A detailed traffic analysis of optical packet switch design is performed. Special consideration is given to the complexity of the optical buffering and the overall switch block structure is considered in general. Wavelength converters are shown to improve the traffic performance of the switch blocks for both random and bursty traffic. Furthermore, the traffic performance of switch blocks with add-drop switches has been assessed in a Shufflenetwork showing the advantage of having converters at the inlets. Finally, the aspect of synchronization is discussed through a proposal to operate the packet switch block asynchronously, i.e. without packet alignment at the input.

A wideband heterodyne optical phase-locked loop for generation of 3-18 GHz microwave carriers

Experimental results of a wideband heterodyne second-order optical phase-locked loop with 1.5- mu m semiconductor lasers are presented. The loop has a bandwidth of 180 MHz, a gain of 181 dBHz, and a propagation delay of only 400 ps. A beat signal of 8 MHz linewidth is phase locked to become a replica of a microwave reference source close to carrier with a noise level of -125 dBc/Hz. The total phase variance of the locked carrier is 0.04 rad/sup 2/ and carriers can be generated in a continuous range from 3 to 18 GHz. The loop reliability is excellent with an average time to cycle slip of 10/sup 11/ s and an acquisition range of 640 MHz.<<ETX>>

WDM packet switch architectures and analysis of the influence of tunable wavelength converters on the performance

A detailed analytical traffic model for a photonic wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) packet switch block is presented and the requirements to the buffer size is analyzed. Three different switch architectures are considered, each of them representing different complexities in terms of component count and requirements to the components, it is shown that the number of fiber delay-lines, that form the optical buffer, can be substantially reduced by the use of tunable optical wavelength converters, thereby exploiting the wavelength domain to solve contention of optical packets. For a 16/spl times/16 switch with four wavelength channels per inlet, all at a load of 0.8, the number of delay-lines is reduced from 47 to 12 by use of tuneable optical wavelength converters. Apart from the number of delay-lines the physical buffer structure is analyzed with special attention to the possibilities offered by optics, i.e., the possibility of several outlets sharing the same physical buffer. For the three architectures presented here, a tradeoff in the buffer architectures is addressed: a buffer physically shared among an outlets requires many wavelengths internally in the switch block, whereas, architectures with buffers dedicated to each outlet require a smaller number of wavelengths.

All optical wavelength conversion by SOA's in a Mach-Zehnder configuration

Penalty free wavelength conversion is demonstrated at 2.5 Gbit/s over a wavelength span of 12 nm by the use of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)s in a Mach-Zehnder configuration. An increase in the extinction ratio is measured for the converted signal compared to the input signal implying signal regeneration as well as wavelength conversion.<<ETX>>

Analysis of a WDM packet switch with improved performance under bursty traffic conditions due to tuneable wavelength converters

For realistic traffic, i.e., bursty traffic patterns, the use of tuneable wavelength converters is recognized as essential for reducing the complexity of photonic wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) packet switches. Results are obtained from an analytical traffic model that includes buffering in the wavelength domain and accounts for bursty traffic. The theoretical model is verified by simulations and from the model we find that higher traffic loads as well as burstiness can be accepted when tuneable wavelength converters are used. Consequently, a larger throughput of the photonic packet switches is obtained and very importantly, this is achieved while keeping the number of gates needed to realize the space switches nearly constant.

All-optical wavelength conversion at bit rates above 10 Gb/s using semiconductor optical amplifiers

This work assesses the prospects for high-speed all-optical wavelength conversion using the simple optical interaction with the gain in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) via the interband carrier recombination. Operation and design guidelines for conversion speeds above 10 Gb/s are described and the various tradeoffs are discussed. Experiments at bit rates up to 40 Gb/s are presented for both cross-gain modulation (XGM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) in SOAs demonstrating the high-speed capability of these techniques.

Detailed dynamic model for semiconductor optical amplifiers and their crosstalk and intermodulation distortion

An advanced dynamic model for multisection semiconductor optical amplifiers is presented. It accounts for the carrier and field distributions in the longitudinal direction as well as for the facet reflectivities. The model can handle arbitrary time-varying input signals and current modulations. The model is used to assess intermodulation distortion and crosstalk. Cascaded amplifiers are considered, and the crosstalk and intermodulation distortion due to cascaded amplifiers are found to accumulate by adding together in amplitude; this may limit the number or cascaded amplifiers in multichannel systems. Carrier-induced nonlinearities depend strongly on facet reflectivities; for 25 dB of single-pass gain, a reflectivity of 5*10/sup -4/ will result in 3 dB excess distortion. Reduction of intermodulation distortion by use of multisection amplifiers is found to be possible only for small channel separations ( >

Optical packet switched network layer without optical buffers

We propose a configuration for a packet switched wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) network including a simple wavelength assignment scheme for data packets. Combined with the use of the wavelength dimension for contention resolution, this reduces the need for optical buffers and when more than 11 WDM channels are used for transmitting data in the optical domain the buffers can be avoided.