Experimental Study of Single- and Multicast Wavelength Conversion at 10 Gb/s Exploiting Four-Wave Mixing in Highly Non-Linear-Photonic Crystal Fiber with Widely Tunable Conversion Range

Abstract Optical networking applications require the use of all-optical wavelength converters with input and output wavelength tenability as well as large numbers of multicasting channels. This article demonstrates the single-to-multiple wavelength conversion via multiple four-wave mixings between a 10-Gbit/s return-to-zero signal and several continuous waves co-propagating in a dispersion-flattened highly non-linear photonic crystal fiber. For single-to-single channel wavelength conversion, a wide conversion range of 31 nm is achieved with the optimal conversion efficiency of −21.4 dB. By employing several continuous-wave probe lights, tunable single-to-dual and single-to-triple channel wavelength conversions are experimentally demonstrated, respectively. Moreover, the dynamic characteristics of the designed wavelength converter are studied under the conditions of variable input powers, polarization mismatch, and different lengths of the highly non-linear-photonic crystal fiber. The system is transparent to both bit rate and modulation format. This is very useful for engineering design and applications of optical-fiber-based wavelength converters in future ultra-high-speed photonic networks.