Optical signal processing using hybrid integrated wavelength converter - bit rate independent polarization mode dispersion compensation

摘要

The explosive demand for data traffic requires high-speed all-optical signal processing. In this paper, we report a monitoring technique of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and planar lightwave circuit (PLC) hybrid integrated wavelength converter as a all-optical exclusive OR (XOR) gate. The monitoring technique can evaluate the differential group delay (DGD) between the two principle states of polarization, which is a indispensable parameter for PMD equalizer. This technique is bit-rate and format independent and may work at extremely high speed of more than 100 Gbit/s. Utilizing hybrid integration, it has a possibility to integrate with a PLC polarization beam splitter (PBS) of a PMD equalizer. We successfully demonstrated bit-rate and format independent PMD compensations with 80 Gbit/s of return-to-zero (Rz) format, 40 Gbit/s of non-RZ (NRZ) format, and 20 Gbit/s of Manchester format signals. The power penalties were less than 0.9 dB.