40-Gb/s optical 3R regenerator using electroabsorption modulators for optical networks

A 40-Gb/s optical retiming, reshaping, and retransmitting (3R) regenerator was proposed and demonstrated using wavelength converters based on electroabsorption (EA) modulators for effectively implementing 40-Gb/s-based or higher bit rate wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. The proposed optical 3R regenerator is configured in a very simple architecture, consisting of two wavelength converters, a clock recovery section, and an optical clock generator section. Furthermore, the stable and polarization-insensitive operation, as well as simple adjustment of an optimal operation condition of our proposed optical 3R regenerator, were confirmed by conducting transmission experiments. To investigate the applicability of optical 3R regenerators to optical networks, it was evaluated by insertion between two 500-km-long segments of transmission line. A Q-factor improvement of about 1.5 dB was obtained after transmission over 1000 km, compared to evaluation without the regenerator. This type of optical 3R regenerator will prove extremely useful in future high-speed and scaleable all-optical networks.