Abstract

Since several years, Optical 3R Regeneration has drawn growing attention as a potential enabling technology for future very high bit-rate and very large capacity long reach transmission systems. Among the different optical techniques that are currently investigated, a majority exploit nonlin-earities originating from optically-induced effects in monolithic integrated devices, such as semiconductor optical amplifier-based devices (SOA), electro-absorption modulators, or in fibers. In all cases, successful 40 Gbit/s optical 3R regeneration has been experimentally demonstrated.^1–3 However, as to compete with electronics, optical solutions for signal regeneration have to offer high performance at the lowest cost, with cost including the best trade-off between power consumption, volume, reliability, manufacturing cost, etc. In this view, SOA-based technology concentrates most of the previous pre-requirements and appears as a real candidate.

© 2002 Optical Society of America