InP Photonic Integrated All-Optical Wavelength Conversion of 128 GBaud DP-16QAM Signals Using XGM in SOAs

In this study, we report a cross gain modulation (XGM)-based Indium Phosphide (InP) photonic integrated wavelength conversion of 128 GBaud DP-16QAM signals in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). An Indium Phosphide photonic integrated circuit (InP-PIC) is most advanced platform for variety of applications including free space optical communications, microwave photonics, and LiDAR (light detection and ranging). The InP-PIC consists two cascaded Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), integrated band pass filter and a delay-line interferometer (DLI) filter to exploit double stage cross gain modulation (XGM). The wavelength converter is characterized at various power levels over a wide range of converted wavelengths. The system performance is analyzed using bit error rate (BER), Extinction ratio (ER), ON-OFF gain and conversion efficiency (CE). BER is measured over a received power range of -12 dBm to 4 dBm. At \( {\varvec{B}\varvec{E}\varvec{R}=10}^{-9}\) , power penalties are lowered to less than 1 dB for down-converting signals and 2 dB for up-converting signals, respectively. A 12 dB gain in CE is achieved over a 60 nm frequency shift. Measured valued of ER are 15.2 dB, 14.5 dB, and 12.95 dB for back-to-back (b2b), down-conversion, and up-conversion at 128 GBaud (1 Tbps) spanning a wavelength range of 35 nm from 1525 nm to 1565 nm.