ALL-OPTICAL WAVELENGTH INDEPENDENT PACKET HEADER REPLACEMENT USING A LONG CW REGION GENERATED DIRECTLY FROM THE PACKET FLAG

We experimentally demonstrate wavelength-independent all-optical packe t header replacement at 1 Gb/s, The new header is modulated onto a rel atively long continuous-wave region that was created by repeatedly rep licating the string of ''1's'' in the original packet's flag, Conseque ntly, the wavelength of the new header is at exactly the same waveleng th as that of the original payload. A power penalty of similar to 1.5 dB at a bit-error rate = 10(-9) is measured when performing the header replacement.