Experimental and theoretical investigation of the regenerative capabilities of electrooptic and all-optical interferometric wavelength converters

An experimental and theoretical investigation of the regenerative capabilities of electrooptic (E/O) and all-optical (A/O) interferometric wavelength converters is presented. We show that both the E/O and A/O regeneration scheme exhibit a 5-dB noise suppression capability. Furthermore, we demonstrate that by cascading two A/O-converters after an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), the performance is further improved resulting in a total noise suppression of 8 dB. Our detailed model, which accounts for the redistribution of a signal in the converters, shows good agreement with the experiments and predicts a significant increase in the number of EDFAs that can be cascaded with interferometric wavelength converters in the link.