Abstract

Signal detection at 40 Gbit/s requires a high optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR).¹ Accumulated noise from optical amplifiers in the spans can therefore severely degrade the system performance. A simple all-optical data regenerator, based on spectral broadening by self-phase modulation of a data stream followed by narrowband filtering, has been shown to achieve simultaneous amplitude restoration and pulse reshaping (2R).² However, to date such a scheme has not yet been examined at 40 Gbit/s data rate or in a system configuration. In this work, we demonstrate an all-fiber optical 2R regenerator (02R) integrated with a tunable, low-dispersion fiber Bragg grating (FBG) filter. We show that such device can significantly improve the sensitivity and OSNR degradation tolerance of a 40 Gbit/s receiver.

© 2002 Optical Society of America