Broadband wavelength converter based on four-wave mixing in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate a 10 Gbit/s nonreturn-to-zero wavelength converter based on four-wave mixing in a 20 m highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. The tunable wavelength conversion bandwidth (3 dB) is about 100 nm. The conversion efficiency is -16 dB when the pump power is 22.5 dBm. Phase modulation was not used to suppress the stimulated Brillouin scattering; thus the linewidth of the converted wavelength remained very narrow. The eye diagrams show that there is no additional noise during wavelength conversion. The measured power penalty at a 10(-9) bit-error-rate level is about 0.7 dB.