All-optical modulation format conversion from NRZ-OOK to RZ-QPSK using parallel SOA-MZI OOK/BPSK converters

Opt Express. 2007 Jun 11;15(12):7774-85. doi: 10.1364/oe.15.007774.

Abstract

A novel all-optical modulation format conversion from non-return-to-zero on-off-keying (NRZ-OOK) to return-to-zero quadrature-phase-shift-keying (RZ-QPSK) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed format conversion scheme is based on parallel Mach-Zehnder interferometric (MZI) OOK/binary-PSK (BPSK) converters, consisting of integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). We experimentally demonstrate that in both decoded channels of the converted RZ-QPSK signal bit error rate (BER) curves show almost the same receiver sensitivity at a symbol-rate of 10.7 Gsymbol/s. In addition, a reasonable dispersion tolerance of the converted signal up to +295 ps/nm is observed. The numerical simulation based upon carrier rate equation verifies the experimental results.