Optical Reshaping of 40-Gb/s NRZ and RZ Signals Without Wavelength Conversion

We experimentally demonstrate a scheme for all-optical reshaping at 40 Gb/s that is wavelength preserving and transparent to both nonreturn-to-zero and return-to-zero on-off keying signals. Eye-diagram reshaping is confirmed by means of bit-error rate versus threshold measurements on both modulation formats. The scheme is based on cross-gain compression in an semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and uses two SOAs that are not in interferometric configuration. Due to its working principle, this method is polarization-independent and suitable, in principle, for higher bit rates.