Abstract

All optical wavelength conversion is expected to play an important role in future optical broadband networks. Wavelength converters, that transform information from one wavelength to another, accompanied by regeneration and reshaping of the input signal are promising components for these architectures. The wavelength conversion can be obtained by gain saturation in optical amplifiers,¹ by carrier depletion in distributed Bragg reflector lasers²-³ by absorption in bistable DBR lasers⁴ or by injection locking in interferometric Y-lasers.⁵ The objective is to achieve simultaneously a high speed operation with a regeneration of the input signal under a moderate input power. In this paper we demonstrate wavelength conversion by injection locking effect in a high speed distributed feedback (DFB) laser. By this method, a bit error rate (BER) less than IO""⁹ up to 10 Gbit/s and a signal regeneration up to 7.5 Gbit/s are obtained with less than 0 dBm input power.

© 1994 Optical Society of America