Optical subcarrier-multiplexing for output-port contention resolution

We demonstrate an all-optical contention resolution technique that combines two identical-wavelength contending 2.5 Gbit/s channels into the same output-port wavelength channel. This is achieved by optically up-converting one channel to a higher microwave frequency beyond the other channel's baseband signal and routing both channels out the desired output-port wavelength channel simultaneously. By using narrow (/spl sim/5 GHz) fiber Fabry-Perot filters for optically demultiplexing the two channels, we recover each channel using a baseband receiver with <1 dB power penalty.