All-optical pulse data generation in a semiconductor optical amplifier gain controlled by a reshaped optical clock injection

Abstract

Wavelength-maintained all-optical pulse data pattern transformation based on a modified cross-gain-modulation architecture in a strongly gain-depleted semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is investigated. Under a backward dark-optical-comb injection with 70% duty-cycle reshaping from the received data clock at 10 GHz, the incoming optical data stream is transformed into a pulse data stream with duty cycle, rms timing jitter, and conversion gain of 15%, 4 ps, and 3 dB, respectively. The high-pass filtering effect of the gain-saturated SOA greatly improves the extinction ratio of data stream by 8 dB and reduces its bit error rate to 10(-12) at -18 dBm. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.