The exponential growth of data traffic in current optical communication networks require higher capacity for the bandwidth demands at a reduced cost per bit. All-optical signal processing is a promising technique to improve network resource utilization and resolve wavelength contention associated with flexible spectrum. This is achieved without necessarily employing optical to electrical signal conversions. In this paper, we experimentally present a novel, spectral efficient technique for defragmentation and wavelength switching on a cascade of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). This is based on cross gain modulation of the optical transmitter. A 10 Gbps intensity modulated master VCSEL lasing at 1549 nm was used for optical power injection into the side modes of two slave VCSELs. The injection results in energy transfer between the lasing modes, causing data inversion on the transmission wavelength. The master lasing wavelength was tuned from 1546.5 to 1551.7 nm resulting in a 5.2 nm or 650 GHz spectral width by varying the bias current. A total of 9 continuous 50 GHz spaced WDM channels with nonoverlapping nominal frequencies and uniform guard bands were generated. This can be used to attain seamless defragmentation and bandwidth optimization for effective spectral resource management. The novel technique is flexible in terms of modulation formats and accommodates various formats with spectrally continuous channels, thereby fulfilling the future bandwidth demands with transmissions beyond 100 Gbps per channel while maintaining spectral efficiency.
For the first time, we demonstrate, VCSEL-to-VCSEL wavelength conversion within the low attenuation 1550 nm window, including transmission over fibre and bit error rate (BER) performance characterization. We experimentally demonstrate a low injection power optical wavelength conversion by injecting an optical beam from a signal carrier master vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) into the side-mode of the slave VCSEL. This technique solves the challenge of wavelength collisions and also provides wavelength re-use in typical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems. This paper, for the first time, uses two 1550 nm VCSELs with tunability range of 3 nm for a 5-9.8 mA bias current. The master VCSEL is modulated with a non-return-to-zero (NRZ) pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS_27-1) 8.5 Gb/s data. A data conversion penalty of 1.1 dB is realized when a 15 dBm injection beam is used. The transmission performance of the converted wavelength from the slave VCSEL is evaluated using BER measurement at a 10-9 threshold. A 0.5 dB transmission penalty of the converted wavelength data is realized in an 8.5 Gb/s transmission over 24.7 km. This work is vital for optical fibre systems that may require wavelength switching for transmission of data signals.
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