40 Gbps All-Optical 3R Regeneration and Format Conversion with Related InP-Based Semiconductor Devices

We report an experimental demonstration of 40 Gbps all-optical 3R regeneration with all-optical clock recovery based on InP semiconductor devices. We also obtain all optical non-return-to-zero to return-to-zero (NRZ-to-RZ) format conversion using the recovered clock signal at 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps. It leads to a good performance using a Mach-Zehnder interferometric wavelength converter and a self-pulsating laser diode (LD). The self-pulsating LD serves a recovered clock, which has an rms timing jitter as low as sub-picosecond. In the case of 3R regeneration of RZ data, we achieve a 1.0 dB power penalty at 10−9 BER after demultiplexing 40 Gbps to 10 Gbps with an eletro-absorption modulator. The regenerated 3R data shows stable error-free operation with no BER floor for all channels. The combination of these functional devices provides all-optical 3R regeneration with NRZ-to-RZ conversion.