Towards 640 Gbit/s wavelength conversion based on nonlinear polarization rotation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Abstract

Taking into account ultra-fast carrier dynamics, this paper models 640 Gbit/s wavelength conversion scheme based on nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) in a single semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and investigates the performance of this kind of wavelength conversion scheme in detail. In this model, two carrier temperature equations are introduced to substitute two energy density equations, which reduce the complexity of calculation in comparison with the previous model. The temporary gain and phase shift dynamics induced by ultra-short optical pulses are numerically simulated and the simulated results are qualitatively in good agreement with reported experimental results. Simulated results show that non-inverted and inverted 640 Gbit/s wavelength conversions based on NPR are achieved with clear open eye diagrams. To further investigate the performance of the non-inverted wavelength conversion scheme, the dependence of output extinction ratio (ER) on some key parameters used in simulation is illustrated. Furthermore, simulated analyses show that high performance non-inverted wavelength conversion based on NPR can be achieved by using a red-shifted filtering scheme.