Efficient, Widely-Tunable Wavelength Conversion for Packets With In-Band Labels

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a tunable wavelength converter for optical packets with a 40 Gb/s non-return-to-zero differential phase shift keying payload and an in-band 1.25-Gb/s on-off keying label. To achieve wide wavelength coverage and integrability, we use a dual pump scheme exploiting four-wave mixing in semiconductor amplifiers. For flexibility and scalability, in-band labels are used. For phase stability, we use a quantum-dash mode-locked laser as a multi-wavelength source for the dual pumps with tunability provided by the output filter. The bit error rate (BER) performance is evaluated for both payload and label after wavelength conversion. We report error free conversion for both the converted payload and label over a range of 12 nm with power penalty.