Bandwidth adjustment and spectral defragmentation for optical networking unit using four wave mixing spectral compression.

Abstract

Nonlinear optical signal processing is expected to be one of promising approaches in optical networking units (ONUs) and it requires mutual conversion between data signals and optical pulse signals for the bandwidth matching between them. We investigate four-wave mixing (FWM) based bandwidth management for ONUs and experimentally demonstrate variable bandwidth adjustment and defragmentation. Experimental results show variability in bandwidth adjustment and spectral defragmentation. Bit-error-rate (BER) measurements show an error-free operation (BER<10-9) with a power penalty of 3.75 dB after FWM-based bandwidth management in simulation.