MULTISTAGE ALL-OPTICAL WDM-TO-TDM-TO-WDM AND TDM-TO-WDM-TO-TDM DATA-FORMAT CONVERSION AND RECONVERSION THROUGH 80 KM OF FIBER AND 3 EDFAS

We demonstrate error free, all-optical multistage 2-Gb/s data format c onversion and reconversion between two wavelength channels and one hig h-speed time channel. We perform both WDM-to-TDM-to-WDM and TDM-to-WDM -to-TDM conversions based on SOA cross-gain compression. Our system us es 80 km of fiber and three EDFA's between the stages, and our scheme can be extended to include many channels. This system may serve as a k ey building block for all-optical WDM networks.