Bit error rate performance for wavelength conversion at 20 Gbit/s

Wavelength conversion at 20 Gbit/s, to longer and shorter wavelength, is achieved using cross gain-compression in a semiconductor optical amplifier. Quantitative performance is assessed from the bit error rate data at 20 Gbit/s, for the first time for any wavelength conversion scheme. For conversion of 10 nm to a shorter wavelength, the penalty is 2.6 dB.