160 GB S SUBPICOSECOND TRANSFORM-LIMITED PULSE SIGNAL GENERATION UTILIZING ADIABATIC SOLITON COMPRESSION AND OPTICAL TIME-DIVISION MULTIPLEXING/

0.8 ps TL pulses are successfully generated from a gain-switched DFB-L D by adiabatic soliton compression using a dispersion decreasing fiber (DDF). The compression ratio can be controlled using the peak input p ower into the DDF. We obtain a 10 x 2n Gb/s pulse stream by optically multiplexing the compressed pulses with a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferom eter type multiplexer, in which n can be freely selected from 1 to 4 b y controlling the coupling ratios of the couplers in the MZ interferom eters. By using the demonstrated techniques, we can multiplex the init ial pulse stream up to 160 Gb/s at the noninterfering duty factor of 0 .2.