Cascaded wavelength conversions using four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers

Wavelength conversion in wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) communication systems would provide significant network performance improvement. Optoelectronic, cross-gain saturation, and cross phase saturation wavelength converters are candidate technologies that have been well characterized, however, they are not "transparent" to either bit-rate or modulation format. Complete transparency is offered only by ultrafast wave mixing techniques-in the present case four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs).