ALL-OPTICAL WAVELENGTH CONVERTER BASED ON ER-DOPED LASER CAVITY AND INTRACAVITY LD AMPLIFIER

An optical wavelength converter is proposed based on a laser cavity th at has a laser-diode amplifier as an optically driven gain modulator a nd an Er-doped, slow-response gain medium. The device converts.ASK sig nal wavelengths over approximately 8.7 nm. Though the converted NRZ da ta signal is inverted, it is amplified by 18 dB with its extinction ra tios improved to nearly unity. Although the data rate converted in the experiment is no more than 0.5 Mb/s, high-gain planar-waveguide techn ology may reduce the cavity length and increase the data rate.