System Impact of Cascaded All-Optical Wavelength Conversion of D(Q)PSK Signals in Transparent Optical Networks

Abstract

We will compare techniques for all-optical wavelength conversion of differentially phase-modulated signals using four-wave mixing and super-continuum generation. For the super-continuum generation, a relation between the conversion efficieny and the nonlinear phase distortion will be derived and it will be shown that this technique is not suitable for the conversion of phase-modulated signals. For the four-wave mixing, techniques for the improvement of the conversion efficiency will be studied. Mainly the suppression of Brillouin scattering and its impact on phase-distortions will be discussed. A detailed discussion of its cascadability in transparent optical networks will conclude the contribution. The introduction of a maximum outage probability can significantly relax the OSNR requirements.