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We present experimental investigations of the dynamical properties of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and their impacts in all-optical signal processing using SOAs. We introduce ultrafast optical signal characterization techniques to fully characterize the gain and phase dynamics of SOAs. We elucidate a consequence of the slow carrier recovery as pattern-dependent phase fluctuation in wavelength conversion of on-off -keyed signals. We also analyze the conversion of the phase fluctuation into amplitude fluctuation limiting the performance of all-optical xor operation. Finally, the performance of all-optical wavelength conversion of differential phase-shift-keyed signals is presented with emphasis on regeneration of the phase information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We introduce a general concept for the design of all-optical wavelength converters with pulse reformatting functionality. The novel wavelength converters are based on a single semiconductor optical amplifier followed by an optical filter. A microelectromechanical system-based realization is shown and simultaneous 40 Gb/s wavelength conversion, switching and signal format conversion is demonstrated. The new pulse reformatting optical filter device outperforms current schemes with respect to input-power requirements, input-power dynamic range and signal quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A red-shift optical filter all-optical wavelength converter compatible to all-optical WDM networks is introduced and demonstrated at 40 and 10 Gb/s. The wavelength converter provides reshaping and can act as a power equalizer. We use the device to overcome wavelength blocking in a looped-fiber network demonstration equivalent to 42 cross-connect switches and a 16800 km transmission distance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]