Improvement of crosstalk tolerance in optical cross-connectsby regenerative frequency converters

Crosstalk penalty in optical networks is investigated in a loop experiment at 5 Gbit/s. The authors demonstrate that in-band crosstalk can be tolerated for ≤ –19.5 dB per cross-connect within a penalty of 2 dB (BER = 10-9) for a chain of five transparent cross-connect paths with regenerative optical frequency converters.