Investigation of a 2R all-optical regenerator based on four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier

摘要

The properties of an all-optical 2R regenerator based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) are investigated. The regeneration is based on the nonlinear FWM transfer function and a study of the system's static behavior reveals the operating conditions, under which the transfer function approaches most the ideal, step-like discrimination characteristic function. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is employed in order to overcome the SOAs speed limitations due to limited carrier dynamics. The simulations with dynamic input data by means of extinction ratio (ER) and Q-factor calculations, showed satisfactory regenerative behavior up to 40 Gb/s.