Simultaneous chromatic dispersion monitoring, extinction ratio enhancement and wavelength conversion using four-wave mixing

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-functional all-optical device performs simultaneous chromatic dispersion (CD) monitoring, extinction ratio (ER) improvement and tunable wavelength conversion using four-wave mixing (FWM) in a single piece of highly nonlinear optical fiber (HNLF). The multi-functional ability arises from the nonlinear power transfer function (PTF) between the input signal and the output idler wave, which not only maps the CD information of the signal onto the average power of idler wave, but also transfers the data information to the idler wave with ER enhancement, making the device compact and cost effective. Furthermore within the wavelength tuning range the monitoring sensitivity and output ER can be much higher compared to all optical monitors and regenerators proposed before. Numerical simulations are then used to demonstrate the efficiency of this method.