7K)SGI 2)&‹26$

Design and Demonstration of 30-nm Tunable Guard-band-less

All-Optical Wavelength Converter for WDM Signals
T. Inoue1 , S. Takasaka2 , K. Ota3 , and S. Namiki1
1 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 2 Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., 3 Trimatiz Ltd.
1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan inoue.takashi@aist.go.jp

Abstract: We design an all-optical wavelength converter enabling guard-band-less tunable

operation over 30-nm bandwidth for WDM signals. Arbitrary conversion operations in
1530-1560nm range for 8-channel 32-Gbaud DP-QPSK signals with the bandwidth of 1THz
are successfully demonstrated.
OCIS codes: (230.7405) Wavelength conversion devices; (060.4370) Nonlinear optics, fibers.

1. Introduction
All-optical wavelength converter is promising in the sense that it can drastically improve the efficiency of the use
of wavelength resource in photonic networks [1]. Desired feature of a wavelength converter is guard-band-less and
broadband tunable, signal-format and polarization independent, and high-quality conversion operation. To meet with
the requirements, we have developed all-optical wavelength converters with two-stage structure performing cascaded
degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) processes [2, 3]. Thus far, previously developed wavelength converters focused
on operations for single-channel input rather than WDM signals or limited tunable range involving guard band. Al-
though all-optical wavelength converters operating for WDM signals have been demonstrated [4,5], broadband tunable
guard-band-less conversion operation has not been verified yet. Therefore, a new design for a truly practical all-optical
wavelength converter addressing broadband guard-band-less operation for WDM signals is necessary and it has to be
demonstrated.
In this paper, we propose a design for wavelength converter to realize guard-band-less and broadband tunable
operation for WDM signals. We develop a converter having the proposed design and demonstrate guard-band-less
arbitrary wavelength conversion for WDM signals with the bandwidth up to 1 THz in 1530-1560 nm range.

2. Design of guard-band-less tunable wavelength converter for WDM signals

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Fig. 1. Design of wavelength converter. Insets are the transfer functions

Fig. 2. Examples of frequency arrange-
of the optical HPF and LPFs.
ment for the signals and the pump.

We employ the two-stage structure [2–4] as a basic design of the wavelength converter under consideration as shown in
Fig. 1, where cascaded degenerate FWM processes are performed. In the first stage, the input signal having an arbitrary
wavelength in the operating bandwidth is converted to the out-band intermediate signal. The intermediate signal is
then converted to the output signal with an arbitrary wavelength in the operating bandwidth in the second stage. The
degenerate FWM process in each stage is induced in a 100-m polarization-maintaining highly nonlinear fiber (PM-
HNLF) by a wavelength-tunable pump having the power of 31.8 dBm. We use the polarization-diversity scheme using
a free-space micro-optic module for polarization-independent FWM process [3]. To suppress the stimulated Brillouin
scattering in the PM-HNLFs, we adopt counter-dithering pump scheme [4], where the pumps’ phases in the both stages
are modulated by 300-MHz sinusoidal RF tones individually and the delay of the tones is adjusted such that the phase
modulation to be added to the signals in the FWM processes is cancelled out.

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To enable broadband tunable conversion operation for WDM signals without any guard band, we should carefully
arrange the frequency of the signals and the pumps in the two stages, because both the bandwidth and the center
frequency of the input WDM signals are variable. We here decide the following operating conditions (See Fig. 2(a)):
(i) the operating bandwidth which is the tunable range of the input and output signals of the converter as the range from
196 THz (1529.553 nm) to 192.1 THz (1560.606 nm), (ii) the bandwidth of the input WDM signals as Bs < 1 THz,
and (iii) the range of the intermediate signal from 189.8 THz (1579.518nm) to 189.8 − Bs [THz]. Figure 2 shows
examples of frequency arrangement in the conversion process for the both stages. The pump’s frequency is then given
by f p = ( f1 + 189.8)/2 THz, where f1 is the smallest frequency (the longest wavelength) of the input/output signals.
In the case of Fig. 2(b), f1 = 192.1 THz and f p = 190.95 THz (1570.005 nm) are the smallest (the wavelengths are
the longest), and the signals and the pump are located the most closely in the frequency domain. It is then concerned
that unwanted idler components generated in the vicinity of the pump by non-degenerate FWM processes interfere
with the signals, which could degrade the quality of the converted signal. However, we confirm that the guard band is
reserved in the range of f p ± Bs to avoid such interference, even when the signal bandwidth is the maximum value of
Bs = 1 THz. On the other hand, Fig. 2(c) is the case that the largest frequency (the shortest wavelength) of the signal f2
becomes the maximum value f2 = 196 THz. The pump’s frequency f p = ( f1 + 189.8)/2 = (196 − Bs + 189.8)/2 THz
depends on the signal’s bandwidth Bs . When Bs = 0 corresponding to single channel input, the pump’s frequency f p
becomes the maximum value f p = 192.9 THz (1554.134 nm). Hence, the pump’s frequency varies in the range of
190.95 ≤ f p ≤ 192.9 THz over C- and L-band according to the conversion condition. Therefore, the PM-HNLFs used
for FWM processes should have broad operation range against the widely variable pump wavelength.
The fact that the intermediate signal in L-band is completely separated from the input/output signals in C-band,
which is given by the condition (iii) of the frequency arrangement shown above, is important in terms of the choice
of optical amplifiers and filters. We can use gain-flattened EDFAs designed for C-band to amplify the input/output
signals, and one for L-band for the intermediate signal. In addition, we use a high-pass filter (HPF) and low-pass filters
(LPFs) with the fixed transfer functions shown in the insets of Fig. 1. They are low-loss dielectric thin-film optical
filters and tolerant to high-power optical input. Therefore, compared with the use of tunable BPFs based on grating
and free-space optics which tend to be bulky and lossy, they are suitable to reject the residual pump and the out-band
ASE noise in tunable conversion operations for WDM signals with variable bandwidth and central frequency. Only
after the second stage of the converter, we use a tunable BPF with the passband of 13.8 nm to extract the output WDM
signals and to reject the residual pump and the intermediate signal.

3. Experiment
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Fig. 3. Experimental setup. The inset shows the spectra of the input 8-ch WDM signals of Case 1, 2, and 3.

We conducted an experiment to demonstrate guard-band-less tunable wavelength conversion for 8-channel 32-Gbaud
dual-polarization (DP) QPSK signals using the wavelength converter designed above. Figure 3 depicts the experimen-
tal setup. We used eight tunable laser sources (TLSs) with the linewidth of 100 kHz as the WDM signal source. A
lithium niobate (LN) IQ modulator (IQM) driven by a 4-channel arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) having the sam-
pling rate of 65GSa/s generated the input signals to be converted. We investigated three cases of frequency allocation
for the WDM signals as shown in the inset of Fig. 3: Case 1 = [196, 195.8, 195.6, 195.45, 195.4, 195.35, 195.2, and
195 THz], Case 2 = [194.5, 194.3, 194.1, 193.95, 193.9, 193.85, 193.7, and 193.5 THz], and Case 3 = [193.1, 192.9,
192.7, 192.55, 192.5, 192.45, 192.3, and 192.1 THz], where the total bandwidth was Bs = 1 THz and the frequency
spacing of the signals was 200 or 50 GHz. The signal was then amplified by a gain-flattened EDFA such that the total
input power of the signal going into the converter became 17 dBm. We used a polarization scrambler to randomly
rotate the polarization of the input signal. In the wavelength converter, WDM signals with one of the frequency al-
location of Case 1, 2, 3 was converted to each of Case 1, 2, 3, corresponding to totally nine patterns of conversion.
We did not use the amplifier at the input end of the converter shown in Fig. 1. The output signal of the converter was
amplified and one of the eight channels was extracted by a tunable BPF having the passband of 100 GHz. After being
coupled with ASE noise to adjust the received OSNR, the output signal was detected by a digital-coherent receiver and
demodulated by offline digital signal processing for analyzing the quality. We repeated the measurement for a channel
several times to check the dependence of the quality on the randomly varying polarization of the input signal.

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Fig. 4. Spectra after the first (upper) and second (lower) stages, for the input signal frequency allocation of Case
1 (left), 2 (center), and 3 (right).
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Fig. 5. (a) Q factors of the output signals converted from Case 1 (left), 2 (center), and 3 (right). (b) Q factor and
(c) BER against received OSNR for the channel at 193.5THz in conversion pattern from and to Case 2.

Figure 4 shows the spectra of the signals after the first and second stages of the converter. In each pattern of the
conversion, the wavelengths of the WDM signals were successfully converted. We found that the all channels in the all
conversion patterns kept the OSNR with the 0.1-nm noise bandwidth as high as more than 28 dB. Due to the dispersion
characteristics of the PM-HNLFs, the output WDM signals had the conversion gain slope. As the worst case, the output
power difference between the channels at 194.5 and 193.5 THz in the conversion pattern from Case 3 to Case 2 was
8.9 dB. However, the OSNRs of the channels at 194.5 and 193.5 THz after the conversion were 28.0 and 30.7 dB,
respectively. Therefore, the signals should have similar high quality and the power difference could be compensated
by a wavelength-selective switch which is assumed to be used after the wavelength converter in a photonic node.
Figure 5(a) depicts the measured Q factors of the received signals after conversion. Note here that we did not add the
ASE noise to adjust the received OSNR. In the all measurements, the signal quality was so high that no bit error was
detected. The main reason of dispersed Q factors over the measurements was the input polarization dependence and
the phase error of the signal. In the wavelength converter, the micro-optic polarization-diversity modules had a large
PDL more than 1 dB due to misalignment of the optical axes, which resulted in the power difference more than 3 dB
for the orthogonal polarization components of the DP-QPSK signals at the worst condition of the input polarization.
Furthermore, the phase error was caused by the slightly remaining residual phase modulation of the counter dithering
scheme which was sensitive to the difference of the optical-path lengths in the both stages of the converter. Figure 5(b)
and (c) represent the measured Q factor and bit-error rate (BER) of the channel at 193.5 THz, respectively, when the
input and output signal frequency allocations were Case 2 and the received OSNR was varied. In the range of OSNR
> 25 dB, the signal quality was so high that a slight degradation of the quality after conversion appeared as the penalty
of the Q factor. On the other hand, the Q penalty for OSNR < 20 dB was negligible because the influence of the ASE
noise added before the receiver was dominant. In fact, the OSNR penalty in BER measurement was so small as 1 dB.

4. Summary
We designed a broadband tunable, guard-band-less wavelength converter for WDM signals and successfully demon-
strated arbitrary conversion in 30-nm range for 8-channel 32-Gbaud DP-QPSK signals in 1-THz bandwidth.
The authors thank H. Nguyen Tan of The University of Danang-University of Science and Technology for valuable
discussions. This work was supported in part by Project for Developing Innovation Systems of the MEXT, Japan.

References 3. T. Inoue et al., JLT 32, 1981 (2014).

4. H. Nguyen Tan et al., JLT 34, 3194 (2016).
1. X. Wang et al., Proc. OFC2016, W2A.52.
5. T. Kato et al., Proc. ECOC2016, W.3.C.1.
2. S. Petit et al., PTL 23, 546 (2011).

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