All-Optical Wavelength Conversion Using a Pulse Reformatting Optical Filter

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 (SOA) followed by an optical filter. A micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) based realization is shown and simultaneous 40 Gb/s wavelength conversion, switching and signal format conversion is demonstrated. The new pulse reformatting optical filter (PROF) device outperforms current schemes with respect to input-power requirements, input-power dynamic range and signal quality.