All-optical wavelength translation over 80 nm at 2.5 Gb/s using four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Wavelength conversion using conventional single pump four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers is limited to wavelength shifts of a few tens of nanometers due to the decrease of signal-to-noise ratio with wavelength shift. In this letter, we demonstrate an 80-mn wavelength shift with four-wave mixing (FWRW) using two orthogonally polarized pumps. The power penalty at a 10/sup -9/ bit-error rate for a 2.5-Gb/s signal is less than 1.0 dB. This result demonstrates the large wavelength shift capacity of this (FWM) technique.