Coherent-to-incoherent light conversion for optical correlators

The authors present a novel coherent-to-amplified spontaneous emission (ASE ) converter based on SOA's cross-gain modulation (XGM) in a counterpropagat ing configuration, Experimental characterizations of the ASE converter with bit-error rate (BER) measurements at 2.5 and 5 Gb/s are shown. The device capabilities are exploited in a delay lines optical recognizer at 2.5 Gb/s. Recognition is based on a coherent-to-incoherent light conversion Followed by a fiber array correlation filter, Experimental evidence here reported s hows performance improvement in comparison with a scheme which adopts a sta ndard telecom source.