One of cost-effective ways to increase the transmission capacity of current standard wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission systems is to use a wavelength band other than the C-band to transmit in multi-band. We proposed the concept of multi-band system using wavelength conversion, which can simultaneously process signals over a wide wavelength range. All-optical wavelength conversion could be used to convert C-band WDM signals into other bands in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) by four-wave mixing and allow to simultaneously transmit multiple WDM signals including other than the C-band, with only C-band transceivers. Wavelength conversion has been reported for various nonlinear waveguide materials other than HNLF. In such nonlinear materials, we noticed the possibility of wideband transmission by dispersion-tailored silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides. Based on the CMOS process has high accuracy, it is expected that the chromatic dispersion fluctuation could be reduced in mass production. As a first step in the investigation of the broadness of wavelength conversion using SOI-based waveguides, we designed and fabricated dispersion-tailored 12 strip waveguides provided with an edge coupler at both ends. Each of the 12 waveguides having different widths and lengths and is connected to fibers via lensed fibers or by lenses. In order to characterize each waveguide, the pump-probe experimental setup was constructed using a tunable light source as pump and an unmodulated 96-ch C-band WDM test signal. Using this setup, we evaluate insertion loss, input power dependence, conversion bandwidth and conversion efficiency. We confirmed C-band test signal was converted to the S-band and the L-band using the same silicon waveguide with 3dB conversion bandwidth over 100-nm. Furthermore, an increased design tolerance of at least 90nm was confirmed for C-to-S conversion by shortening the waveguide length. It is confirmed that the wavelength converters using the nonlinear waveguide has sufficiently wide conversion bandwidth to enhance the multi-band WDM transmission system.

The configuration and operation of an all-optical 3R-regenerator for high-speed data transmission are described. An all-optical 3R-regenerator using a fiber-based optical switch is proposed and successfully demonstrated in a 160 Gbit/s 3R-regenerating transmission experiment.

We describe a transmission system having a data rate of 160 Gbit/s based on the RZ-DPSK modulation format. The 160 Gbit/s single-polarization signal is generated by optical time division multiplexing technology using the base rate of 40 Gbit/s. The setup is explained and results are given with a special focus on the stability issue of the transmission system. The pulse source, the optical gate for demultiplexing, the clock recovery and the balanced photo-detector are based on semiconductor components. We present long-term bit error measurements (10 hours) over two different long-haul fiber links. The first link comprises 3106 km standard single mode fiber and uses a PMD mitigation scheme. The other link consists of 4 dispersion managed 80 km fiber spans without the need for an additional PMD compensation. Using EDFA amplification solely and also no FEC, error-free operation was achieved over several hours, only limited by slow drift effects in the laboratory system.