Simulation and experimental characterization of SOA-MZI-based multiwavelength conversion

We present, for the first time, extensive simulation and experimental characterizations of single SOA-MZI-based multiwavelength conversion (MWC) of NRZ data at 10 Gb/s and RZ data at 40 Gb/s under various parametric conditions deploying ITU standard 100- and 200-GHz channel spacing. We analyze, in particular, the physical performance impairments caused by high-order four-wave mixing interference. Our simulation results indicate the promising performance of the MWC up to eight channels with 200-GHz channel spacing. We further experimentally demonstrate four-channel 10-Gb/s error-free MWC with signal regeneration possibilities and 40-Gb/s MWC with moderate penalties, based on commercially available integrated SOA-MZIs. We obtained clear, open converted eye diagrams and achieved negligible difference in channel performance among all MWC channels at both bit rates. Our results proved the excellent performance of a simple scheme for various future network and system applications, such as all-optical wavelength multicast and grid networking.